Gnome 2 on RedHat 9 and Solaris

[Chris Majewski <majewski cs ubc ca>]

We have a mixed network of RedHat and Solaris boxes. User home
directories are  mounted via  NFS. Has anyone  got Gnome 2  working in
this configuration? I'm not  even talking about simultaneous linux and
solaris sessions here - just the ability to use both environments, one
at a time. 

Our RedHat boxes  are running 7.3 now (Gnome  1.4) but we're upgrading
them to 9 (Gnome 2). As long as our Solaris servers run Gnome 1.4, the
two don't  clash. But  in the long  run we  would like to  share 
users' Gnome configurations between Solaris and RedHat, or at least be
able to run the same Gnome version on both. 

I tried it now and get various more or less fatal errors. For example,
if I log on to a Solaris box via Gnome 2, then logout and log on to a RedHat
box, I get no menu bar on the RedHat box. So I can't even logout! 
If I log on to a RedHat box first, then logout and log on to a Solaris
box, Gnome on  the Solaris box complains that  the configuration is in
use and forces me to logout again.

With Gnome 1.4, we managed to make things work via an ugly hack on the Solaris
servers,  which would  rename the  ~/.gnome directory  on  logout, and
rename it back  on login. (Of course this  meant user preferences were
not shared between Linux and Solaris). 

With  2.0 this  no longer  works,  even if  I use  .gnome2 instead  of
.gnome.  And  when I spoke to  the Gnome developers a  while ago, they
claimed  that  running 2.0  on  both  platforms  would solve  all  our
problems. On the contrary, it seems to make them worse. 

-chris