GConf problems - possible bug?

[Martin Craig <m s craig rl ac uk>]

I'm getting a problem with GConf 1.2. It is illustrated by the following
gconftool behaviour:

gconftool-2 -g /apps/goats/herd/applet_goat_1109277067/alive
true

gconftool-2 -a /apps/goats/herd/applet_goat_1109277067
 alive = true

gconftool-2 -R /apps/goats/herd
(..nothing listed..)

gconftool-2 --shutdown
Shutdown error: Failed:
 Failure shutting down config server: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0

(..nevertheless gconfd is indeed killed..)

gconftool-2 --spawn

gconftool-2 -R /apps/goats/herd
 /apps/goats/herd/applet_goat_110927706:
  alive = true

This seems to happen pretty reliably after running my app but I can't
for the life of me see what I'm doing wrong. I'm using the gconf_client
wrapper functions. Somehow when I set keys like 

/apps/goats/herd/applet_goat_1109277067/alive

it doesn't get an entry under /apps/goats/herd until gconfd is restarted
(I assume it should do?).

Does anyone have any ideas where I might be going wrong, or could this
be a GConf bug (caching problem?)

Thanks,
Martin.