Gnome Panel won't run in remote Xwindow

[Jack Aubert <jaubert cpcug org>]

I'm running Gnome -- the build that came packaged with Red Hat Linux 6.1 --
on a generic machine on my LAN.  On another machine (Windows NT) I have
hummingbird and was able to start up the Gnome panel with the command panel
&.    Following a power failure and reboot on the Linux box, I can no
longer get panel to run in the X-window on the remote machine.  Other
applications seem to work as before.  

The command "panel &" in the X terminal window exits with the following
error message:

** Warning **: Could not get name service!
** ERROR **: file goad.c: line 659 (real_goad_server_activate): assertion
filed:
(name_service !=CORBA_OBJECT_NIL)
aborting...

I can, however run panel OK from the console, and I can run other things in
the remote window including gnorpm, control-panel, and linuxconf.  The
reference to name service doesn't seem to have anything to do with DNS,
which is working fine.  Any suggestions?