Unknown GNOME Error

hey, when i reinstalled FC3, i had it default setup KDE for my desktop b/c i was using GNOME before and it was kind of slow so i wanted to check out KDE for fedora (i'd used it with SuSe before). so i added the packages, but the first time of installing them i got an error that said there was a problem and it would close. but then i did it again and it worked just fine. but after restarting, whenever i logon with either name (root or my own) i get this error message:

There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon.
Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly.
The Settings Daemon restarted too many times.
The last error message was:
Child process did not give an error message, unknown failure occurred
GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in.

so whats wrong? any ideas? thanks..

Check your ~/.xsession-errors file. (If you have one. )

i dont have one.. unless i can't type in ~/.xsession into the file browser.
but i do have a file thats /usr/share/gnome/default.session:

# This is the default session that is launched if the user doesn't
# already have a session.
# The RestartCommand specifies the command to run from the $PATH.
# The Priority determines the order in which the commands are started
# (with Priority = 0 first) and defaults to 50.
# The id provides a name that is unique within this file and passed to the
# app as the client id which it must use to register with gnome-session.
# The clients must be numbered from 0 to the value of num_clients - 1.

[Default]
num_clients=7
0,id=default0
0,Priority=60
0,RestartCommand=pam-panel-icon --sm-client-id default0
1,id=default1
1,Priority=10
1,RestartCommand=gnome-wm --default-wm gnome-wm --sm-client-id default1
2,id=default2
2,Priority=40
2,RestartCommand=gnome-panel --sm-client-id default2
3,id=default3
3,Priority=40
3,RestartCommand=nautilus --no-default-window --sm-client-id default3
4,id=default4
4,Priority=60
4,RestartCommand=rhn-applet-gui --sm-client-id default4
5,id=default5
5,Priority=50
5,RestartCommand=eggcups --sm-client-id default5
6,id=default6
6,Priority=40
6,RestartCommand=magicdev --sm-client-id default6

Well, no. ~ generally means <user's home dir>, so if it did exist, it would be in your home dir. Also note, it's a dot file, which usually does not show up unless you long list with all attribs.
ls -la

yea, i knew about ~ being the home dir. lol i figured that out from wine, but wine is also a '.' file and i can put ~/.wine into the file browser and access it.

I've got the same error on Slackware with Gnome 2.6.2, but I do have a .xsession-errors file so I'll include it..

stderr is not a tty - where are you?
SESSION_MANAGER=local/wmli006954:/tmp/.ICE-unix/4724

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed

(gnome-panel:4819): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 769 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `filename != NULL' failed


Haven't looked anything deeper into it, but this is the error I get...

/Zappa

As for Zappa, did you run any updates recently? It could be something as simple as (believe it or not) font files owned by a different user.

I would run with strace, which will show you the system calls, it will help you track down what it is trying to do when it fails.

Cheers.