unable to reach the control-center

[Matt Garman <garman uiuc edu>]

Hello.  I've finally compiled and installed most of the gnome packages.
However, just getting started with GNOME, I've already run into the
following problem: when I run "gnomecc," the control-center window comes
up.  But when I click on anything, I get the following message on the
terminal from which I ran gnomecc:

** WARNING **: Unable reach the control-center.
Exiting...

And when I quite GNOME, I get the following messages:

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkcontainer.c: line 730 (gtk_container_remove):
assertion `widget->parent == GTK_WIDGET (container)' failed.

Gtk-WARNING **: invalid cast from `(unknown)' to `GtkWidget'

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 3500 (gtk_widget_get_style):
assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed.

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkctree.c: line 5130
(gtk_ctree_node_set_foreground): assertion `GTK_IS_CTREE (ctree)' failed.

I don't know if these messages are related or not to my above problem.
Also, if I try to get help from the help menu in gnomecc, I get a dialog
that has the error message, "No help is available/installed.  Please make
sure you have the GNOME User's Guide installed on your system."

I'm not too familiar with GNOME, but I have a hunch my problem may have
something to do with the way I installed gnome.  I'm using a program
called "epkg" for managing roll-your-own software (check out
http://encap.cso.uiuc.edu/).  In a nutshell, I use the
"--prefix=/usr/local/encap/control.center-1.0.50" option of configure.
Then make install puts everything in PREFIX (as you'd expect).  epkg then
just goes through and makes symbolic links from everything in PREFIX to
/usr/local.  (I believe there is a program similar to epkg called "stow.")
This makes managing (installing/uninstalling/testing) self-compiled
packages very easy to maintain.  But I think it's confusing GNOME somehow.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Garman, garman@students.uiuc.edu
"And through the window in the wall
 Come streaming in on sunlight wings
 A million bright ambassadors of morning." 
	--Pink Floyd, "Echoes"