X error from gnome-session on sparc Sol 9 w/ Gnome 2.12

[Travis Spencer <travislspencer gmail com>]

Hey All,

A colleague and I have been trying to build Gnome 2.12 on Solaris 9
running on the sparc architecture.  We have built all of the
packages[1], but we can't get it to run.

When logging in, the Gnome splash screen is displayed.  After a
moment, it drops us back to the login screen.  It leaves a little bit
of info in .xsession-errors:

SESSION_MANAGER=local/twix.cat.pdx.edu:/tmp/.ICE-unix/19866,tcp/twix.cat.pdx.edu:33715
Warning: program compiled against libxml 205 using older 204
The program 'gnome-session' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.
  (Details: serial 960 error_code 8 request_code 72 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
Window manager warning: Failed to a open connection to a session
manager, so window positions will not be saved: Could not open network
socket
Window manager warning: Log level 32: could not find XKB extension.
Window manager warning: Lost connection to the display ':0.0';
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed
the window manager.

Also, if I kill the X server and dtlogin, run xinit from the console,
and execute the code from my .xsession file, gnome-session outputs the
previous error (as it does when logging in from dtlogin), but it
*does* start -- or at least it seems like it since the windows get
decorated with scrollbars, titlebars, etc.

How should we work around this?  I suspect that this is a problem with
either GDK or Xlib.  I was thinking that we should check out GTK from
CVS and try to build that.  If the error persists, then we should
update Xlib.  Is this a sensible plan?

Here is a summary of my system information:

OS: Solaris 9
Architecture: Sparc
Gnome: 2.12
Compilers: gcc 3.4 (primarily), gcc 4.0.2, and Forte 7
Lots more info: http://wiki.cecs.pdx.edu/view/Gnome/WebHome

Any help, suggestions, or thought would be *much* appreciated!

--

Regards,

Travis Spencer

[1] http://wiki.cecs.pdx.edu/view/Gnome/GnomePackage