Gnome-session hangs at splash screen

[William McKee <william knowmad com>]

Hi all,

I've been battling with an issue all day after upgrading my Debian Woody
system to Debian sid (aka, unstable). The crux of the problem is that
when Gnome 2.4 starts, it freezes at the splash screen. X runs fine and
I can boot with IceWM. It's only gnome-session that is giving me
problems.

I can access gnome-session with root or with a new user. I tried
deleting my existing user (after moving the home directory!) and adding
it back but I still have the same hangs presumably because this new user
has the same name as my existing user.

The only new item I could find was a line in the .xsession-errors file:

  gnome-smproxy: unable to connect to session manager

I've googled this error but am only finding old messages regarding the
RH distro. I can't figure out what is causing gnome-session to hang for
this particular user. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
William

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