gdm crash

[David Seery <djseery btinternet com>]

Hello,

I seem to be encountering a gdm crash I can't fix.

I'm running gdm 2.5.90.0, but I get the same results with the previous
versions of gdm that I can test, back to about 2.4.4.5.  Although trying
to login as my principal user (djs) works, any attempt to log in as any
other user, including root, fails.  gdm crashes straight after entering
the user name; there is no opportunity to enter a password, so the
problem does not appear to be that the session is incorrectly set up.
The process exists and restarts.

Here's what I get in syslog, up to the point where the greeter
apparently starts:

Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5835]: Sending START_NEXT_LOCAL
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5833]: Handling message: 'START_NEXT_LOCAL'
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5835]: gdm_slave_greeter: Running greeter
on :0
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5833]: (child 5835) gdm_slave_child_handler
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5835]: gdm_slave_greeter: Greeter on pid 5845
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5835]: Sending GREETPID == 5845 for slave
5835
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5835]: Sending GREETPID 5835 5845
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5833]: Handling message: 'GREETPID 5835 5845'
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5833]: Got GREETPID == 5845
Feb 11 00:52:30 orkney gdm[5833]: (child 5835)
gdm_slave_usr2_handler: :0 got USR2 signal
Feb 11 00:52:34 orkney gdm[5835]: gdm_slave_wait_for_login: In loop

after entering a user name I get:

Feb 11 00:53:20 orkney gdm[5833]: mainloop_sig_callback: Got signal 17
Feb 11 00:53:20 orkney gdm[5833]: gdm_cleanup_children: child 5835
crashed of signal 11
Feb 11 00:53:20 orkney gdm[5833]: gdm_cleanup_children: Slave crashed,
killing its children
Feb 11 00:53:21 orkney gdm[5833]: gdm_child_action: In remanage
Feb 11 00:53:21 orkney gdm[5833]: gdm_display_manage: Managing :0
Feb 11 00:53:21 orkney gdm[5833]: loop check: last_start 1076460743,
last_loop 1076460743, now: 1076460801, retry_count: 1
Feb 11 00:53:21 orkney gdm[5833]: Resetting counts for loop of death
detection, 90 seconds elapsed since loop started or session lasted more
then 30 seconds.

and gdm starts again.  I'm using the graphical greeter, but I get the
same behaviour with gdmlogin.

Can anyone suggest a cause for this?

Just for complete information, I'm running the unstable Gnome 2.5.3
on Gentoo with a Athlon XP.

Cheers,

David