Items missing from gnome menu - How to fix?

[Len Philpot <len philpot org>]

I've just apparently lost my session preferences, including 
several items in the system part of the gnome menu. The most 
important I'd like to restore are the Logout and Lock Screen 
choices, but even the Help choice is gone. The user stuff I know 
how, but not these. I'm able to add a button for each to the 
panel, but not the menu. This is on gnome 1.2 under RH7. I'm 
logged in as user 'len', but since it's my machine, I have full 
access if needed.

Here's what led up to it:

I had an apparently runaway process (fetchnews, maybe?) that 
caused the root filesystem to fill up completely. I found an 
800MB+ ~/.xesession.errors and several hundred megs in 
/var/spool/squid. I was able to get the usage back down where it 
should be, but it never showed up (df -k), so I decided to 
reboot. Maybe I should have run 'sync'? Anyway, when it tried to 
shutdown squid, the system hung, so I had to hit the button.

Now that I'm back up, usage is back to a normal level, but I've 
lost my gnome session preferences (or some of them).

Another interesting thing is that if I su to root in a terminal 
and run gnomecc, it starts, but I get these kind of errors:

root] ~ # gnomecc

** WARNING **: an initialization error occurred while starting 
'background-properties-capplet'.
aborting...

** WARNING **: an initialization error occurred while starting 
'screensaver-properties-capplet'.
aborting...

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

** CRITICAL **: file gtk-multiview.c: line 440 
(gtk_multiview_set_current): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (child)' 
failed.

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 1508 (gtk_widget_hide): 
assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed.

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

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 3493 
(gtk_widget_get_style): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' 
failed.

etc., etc.

With each applet I choose from gnomecc, instead of the applet, I 
get a new instance of gnomecc. However, if I login as root, it 
runs normally.

At any rate, I need to get the logout/lock and whatever else I'm 
missing from the system part of the meny added back. How can I 
do this? Am I better off just deleting or renaming ~/.gnome* and 
starting over, or will this even accomplish anything?

Since I'm on the Internet with a cable modem, just out of 
paranoia, what are some common checks I can do to see if anyone 
gained access?

Thanks.

-- 

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