Re: I think I know what is clobbering my Gnome (Resolved)

[John Jason Jordan <johnxj comcast net>]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I finally nailed it.

After creating a new user and logging in the new user had metacity. I had
renamed the new users .local folder to .local-original, then copied my .local
folder to the new user. After logging out and back in again as the new user
metacity failed to load. Therefore, I knew the problem was in my .local folder. 

After much use of diff and trying things I focused
on .local/share/applications/metacity.desktop. This file did not exist in the
new user's original .local folder.

I tried renaming it, but Nautilus steadfastly refused to accept any changes.
However, from the command line root was able to rename it to
metacity.desktop.old. Then I rebooted. And after logging in metacity launched
as it is supposed to. Everything else seems to be working normally.

I have no idea what rogue process created this file.

It is a text file that can be opened with Gedit. Looking at the contents I see
nothing that says "don't launch metacity for this user." 

If any of the Gnome users on this list have such a file, it would be
interesting to compare notes. I feel an obligation to file a bug report, but I
in order to make the bug report useful I need to figure out what is the purpose
of the file, what created it, and where it went wrong.