Gconf/panel interaction problems with mandatory preferences

[Sean Millichamp <sean compu-aid net>]

I am using Gnome 2.2 as shipped in Red Hat 9.  I'm trying to do a
kickstart based deployment for a number of Linux workstations.

I have successfully used the mandatory gconf setting ability to
permanently configure items such as the http_proxy and even my entire
panel configuration.

The GNOME 2.2 Desktop Sys Admin Guide said that for default settings to
use /apps/panel/default_profiles/medium/ but I found that for mandatory
settings I had to actually mirror what the panel appeared to be using
after first initializing: /apps/panel/profiles/default/

So I have the panel starting exactly the way I want it to be except that
there is an error box popping up upon every start that seems to be
generated by gconf stating that gnome-panel has tried to set keys that
are marked as read-only.  I have noted that this also appears when I try
changing a mandatory value in the panel after loading - which is okay. 
I just don't want the error to pop up every time someone logs in.

There are a number of detailed errors it gives but they are all of the
form:
Can't overwrite existing read-only value:
 Can't overwrite existing read-only value:
 Value for `/apps/panel/profiles/default/objects/main_menu/object_type'
set in a read-only source at the front of your configuration path
Can't overwrite existing read-only value:
 Can't overwrite existing read-only value:
 Value for `/apps/panel/profiles/default/objects/main_menu/panel_id' set
in a read-only source at the front of your configuration path
Can't overwrite existing read-only value:
 Can't overwrite existing read-only value:
 Value for `/apps/panel/profiles/default/objects/main_menu/path' set in
a read-only source at the front of your configuration path
... and so on.

Is there either a better/more proper way of enforcing global panel
properties or a way to silence the error messages?  This is sort of a
critical show stopper for me.

Thanks very much...

Sean