The Panel and Session Management

[John R Sheets <dusk ravendusk org>]

Something funny's going on.  I can get session management to work
fine when I do it 100% through the panel.  If I bring the panel
up through gnome-session, and run apps through the panel's menu,
those apps register themselves correctly with the session manager
(I tested primarily with gtt).  However, when I run those same
apps from the command line, they fail to register properly, and
are not added to that very same session.  Also, when I run
save-session, it complains that it can't connect to the session
manager, which means that I can't bring that session down
manually.  Yet, when I Logout through the panel, the session
saves and quits properly.

This is great if I never leave the panel -- things work!  But
that's just a little too limiting for me.  (c:

So my question is, what could be going on here?  Does the panel
do some extra hocus pocus?  My X Server & window manager are
already running when I call gnome-session; could that have
anything to do with it?  What would allow the panel to connect to
the session manager, but not save-session?

Confused,
John