Problems with null/missing gconf defaults

[Neil Bird <neil fnxweb com>]

  I'm not completely au fait with the functioning of gconf, but I've 
come to the conclusion that a number of nasty gnome problems I've been 
suffering since upgrading Fedora Core 2 to 3 all come down to gconf.

  It appears as if [stop me if I start talking rubbish] default values, 
which I believe come from schema files, are not making it through to 
apps. in most/all cases.

  This causes a no. of malfunctions/crashes in several gnome apps., 
which I've tried to pin down in gdb.

  According to gconf-editor (which itself took a while to get running 
as it was crashing at start-up), lots of fields which I'd expect to be 
set (e.g., metacity default settings/bnidings) are /present/, but have 
no type or value.

  If I gdb a crashing app. (first I had was 
gnome-background-properties) it seems to be calling 'gconf_client_get()' 
and getting no error, but also a NULL return, & I'm guessing diff. apps. 
handle this differently. g-bg-prop crashed upon receiving a 'null' 
backgound filename.

  If I manually set the type & give a value to problem fields, which 
presumably get put in my ~/.gconf settings, the various problems seem to 
be worked around, but I balk at having to do them all for every user.

  Other apps. aren't crahsnig, but are behaving bizarrely (e.g., 
windowlist is zero width).

  Starting with a brand new user and/or blatting ~/.[a-zA-Z]* does not 
solve anything, which leads me to suspect the access of defaults.


  So:  any ideas as to where I should start looking?  Does it *sound* 
like gconf?

  I've 'rpm -q --verify'd the gnome & gconf RPMs, FWIW.

--
[neil fnx ~]# rm -f .signature
[neil fnx ~]# ls -l .signature
ls: .signature: No such file or directory
[neil fnx ~]# exit