Gnome/Nautilus desktop startup problem

[Roddy McColl <roddy mri swmed edu>]

I am running RedHat 7.2 with Gnome and using Nautilus.

As of a few days ago I find that, for any user logging into the system
through gdm (including root), when the "Start Here" app starts up it
quickly crashes (after a few seconds) and none of the desktop launcher
icons which the user has created appear on the desktop. Subsequent
attempts to visit the "Start Here" app by selecting the icon on the
panel also causes a crash.

In addition, following the crash, if the user starts a gnome-terminal,
there are several cycles of the terminal losing focus, then regaining
it, then losing it again, until finally focus returns to the terminal
window.

~/.xsession-errors reports a series of lines such as

"Registered .... nautilus-factory ...."

There are no error messages such as "Failed to start up..."

/var/log/messages has a kernel error of
"NULL pointer when dereferencing ....."
and indicates this is related to nautilus.

Do anyone have any idea what is going on here and how to fix the
problem? This is very frustrating.

TIA

-roddy

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         Roddy McColl PhD      roddy mri swmed edu
	 UT Southwestern            (214) 648-2910
	 http://www-mri.swmed.edu/homes/roddy.html
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