GNOME authentication problems
 

running various configuration apps (gconf-editor, gnome-control-center) in GNOME as root, I get the following error message on a pretty regular basis:

GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session manager:
Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed.


why's this happening, and what can I do to work around it?

When does this happen?
 

Does this only happen when you su from an terminal emulator, or does it also occur when you have to supply a password from the GUI? (For example, when doing the network or user configuration.) For me, it happened every time I opened a GNOME component after su-ing from a terminal window. I never noticed anything bad coming from it, though; I still had full root access from whatever program I was using.