Gnome-Terminal/VTE not working for non-root user

["David Murphy" <glibdud hotmail com>]

Hi folks. I'm running a Linux From Scratch system. This problem plagued me 
for a while at Gnome 2.2, and it's still around after an upgrade to 2.4.

When I execute gnome-terminal, it pulls up a terminal window, but then gives 
me nothing. The cursor blinks away at the upper-left corner of the window, 
but I never get a prompt, and it won't accept any input. Executing vte has 
identical symptoms (though a different-looking window). This happens on my 
non-root user, but the terminals work just fine as root. Sounds like a 
permission problem, but examining a few obvious suspects produced nothing. I 
found a similar problem discussed long ago in the list archives, but I 
didn't get anything out of that.

Basically, to start with, can someone give me a brief list of possibilites 
for file permission problems?

Another bug from 2.2 (haven't tested it in 2.4)... as non-root, if I opened 
two terminal windows and then closed one, Gnome would die, and gdm would 
recycle to the login screen. Don't know if that's related or not.

I've tried two versions of gnome-terminal and vte, (2.2.1/0.10.26 and 
2.4.2/0.11.10) same results.

Thanks for any help...
-David Murphy

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