Loss of panel applets after power failure

[Chris Webster <chris raf atd ucar edu>]

This morning after last nights power failure, I logged in and all
applets are missing from the panel.  I also use gnome on 2 aircraft,
which repeatedly suffer crashes.  They have suffered similar applet
losses.  It's a little expensive to fly half way around the world just
to delete the .gnome directory and rebuild the layout.  Using current
Helix distro.

Is there a way to tell gnome, that no matter what happens, do not alter
the saved setup?

Also, is there a command to neatly log out gnome from a script (e.g.  I
have an icon to shutdown/halt the computer, but it might be more gnome
friendly to execute some logout function first)?

--Chris