Slow start problem - failure to authenticate

[Raoul Golan <raoul ind tansu com au>]

Hi all,
 
I have this strange problem with the gnome 1.0 that comes with
RH 6.0.
 
This problem only manifests itself right after booting... if
I restart X via ctl-alt-backspace, the problem goes away,
at least until I reboot.
 
The problem is as follows:
 
When I log in via gdm, gnome seems to hang for about a minute.
Then the following appears in .xsession-errors:
 
   -------
   gnome-smproxy: unable to connect to session manager
 
   GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session manager:
   Authentication Rejected, reason : MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 authentication
   rejected.
   --------
 
At this point the window manager (Enlightenment) starts up, and it too
hangs for about a minute (no panel, no icons, nothing).  Then the
following message comes out:
 
   ------
   GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session manager:
   Authentication Rejected, reason : MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 authentication
   rejected.
 
   ** CRITICAL **: file gsm-protocol.c: line 602 (gsm_protocol_new):
   assertion `GNOME_CLIENT_CONNECTED (gnome_client)' failed.

   ** WARNING **: Could not connect to gnome-session.
   -------
 
At this point everything works ok, however I'm left with the
default session (not the session I saved), and I'm unable to logout.
I need to ctl-alt-backspace to kill X, after which I'm back to
gdm, and then the problem goes away until I reboot.
 
My machine is not networked while this happens - I have a dial
up connection to an ISP, which I connect to via a panel applet.
However, the dial up link is not up while this happens.
 
I also noticed that if I change my /etc/hosts from
 
    127.0.0.1 localhost
    0.0.0.0   myhost.mydomain myhost
 
to
 
    127.0.0.1 localhost
    127.0.0.1 myhost.mydomain myhost
 
the problem also goes away, but I end up with a dialogue box
after logging in telling me that gnome can't resolve myhost.

kingman cheung <cheung@gluon.ucdavis.edu> also has the same
problem, and has posted to comp.os.linux.x.  Unfortunately,
noone's posted a reply.  I've also done a search on the
archives, and noticed that others have been suffering this
problem as well - however, I could not find a solution!
 
I tried deleting .gnome/session outside of gnome, no
effect.  I tried deleting .gnome* and reconfiguring,
but ended up with the same problem.

Any ideas?  I don't want to go back to "The Other Gui".
 
Many thanks,
 
Raoul

-- 
:%s/[Ll]inux/GNU\/Linux/g