gdm: first login fails, second one suceeds: why?

["John P. Verel" <jverel optonline net>]

This is a repost, forgive me.

It sometimes happens that upon first login to gdm,  
gdm-2.2.3.1-20, that with user and password correct, I screen blanks,
gdm comes back.  Second login works.

Tonight I found and cleaned out a mess of files in ~/.gnome like this:

-rw-------    1 john     john            2 Dec 11 21:59 /home/john/.gnome/.gnome-smproxy-t4yKsZ

They were up to a month old.

After deleting them, the problem seemed to go away.

Am I on the right track on this?
-- 
John P. Verel
Living Proof That Low Tech Beats High Tech!