Gnome stops before loading

[Petros Tsantoulis <i_am_ponos yahoo com>]

Hello,

I use Gnome almost exclusively. I usually manage to
solve my problems but in this case, I'm stuck. On my
other computer (athlon xp 2200+, 512MB RAM) running
Slackware 10, Gnome started normally but I had to wait
a long time (~5 min?) between hitting the logoff
button and the prompt appearing. This made me use the
Dropline Gnome packages for slackware (two consecutive
versions, latest including Gnome 2.8) under which I
had the exact same problem. 

At this point I was very frustrated and decided to
switch to Gentoo instead (note that I was an exclusive
Slackware user since 1995). Unfortunately, I had even
more problems under Gentoo. Gnome started but after
showing the splash screen it would stop for a very
long time. The problem persists after using the "nv"
instead of the "nvidia" drivers, after a kernel
upgrade (2.6.8, 2.6.9 and 2.6.10) and when I run
without sound (alsa modules not loaded). I have not
tried disabling the network (eth0 network with static
IP, nothing fancy). The computer does not have any USB
devices, scanners, printers. Note that plain window
managers start just fine (Blackbox, Windowmaker) and
the system casually reaches >20 days uptime as an
ftp/ssh server. 

My questions are:
a) How can I debug Gnome loading? Is there any way to
know WHICH process blocks (gconfd? bonobo-something?
gnome-keyring-daemon? metacity?) and WHY? Is there a
special log file? Is there a special debug mode?
b) I have tried running Gnome as another user without
pre-existing preferences. I have also tried removing
all gnome-related secret directories (.gnome2 etc). Is
there any global preference setting that may be
responsible? 
c) Besides the minimalist "man gnome", are there any
documents that might help? I don't need documents
explaining "howto use the mouse" or esoteric C
programming advice. Some stuff for the frustrated
sysadmin would be most interesting.

Thanks!!

P.

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