Gnome mysteries

["Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart bmsi com>]

I have RedHat 7.2 with Ximian Gnome on several machines from laptop to
desktop.

1) On most machines, the GDM login screen blanks the screen after a time
out.  This is a great feature, and works for remote X terminals and
LTSP as well as local video.
However, my home machine, running same versions of RPMS, does not blank
screen at GDM login.  Screen blank does work on text consoles, and for
logged in GUI users.  It also works for a connected X Terminal (running
on 486!).  Why does this not work for this one machine?  It has Intel
Pentium 200, 80M RAM, 15G disk, ATI Mach32 video.

2) I use the Gnome weather applet.  On most machines, it works great.
On my home machine, it displays the sun symbol, but not the
temperature.  The configuration is the same in all cases.  It gets
wierder.  On the *same* home machine, it works for everyone elses
login.  It only doesn't work for my login.  I have compared the config
files, and they are all identical.  Curiously, if I look at my config
file, the temperature is there - properly fetched from the web site.  It
is just not displayed!

3) I use the RedHat PPP applet.  It worked fine in RH6.2.  In RH7.2, it
still works mostly fine, except that after connecting the applet still
shows the interface as not connected.  If I right click and edit
properties, and change the interface selection to another interface then
back to the same interface, the display will right itself.  This seems
like a straitforward bug.

4) Occasionally, for no reason that I can determine (there is plenty of
disk space), some part of my Gnome setup is gone when I log in.  There
were no errors displayed when logging out previously, and no errors in
/var/log/messages.  For instance, sometimes GMC is gone, and I have to
add it back to the session properties.  When I logged in this evening,
Gnome Panel was gone.  I right clicked on the desktop to get a terminal
and ran "panel" from the shell, and it came up and added itself back to
the session properties.  Sometimes, applets disappear from the Panel.
For instance, the weather applet disappeared this morning, and the task
list and/or desk guide often disappear.  It is easy, but a nuisance to
add them back.

--
              Stuart D. Gathman
Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.