I rebooted my server running Red Hat Linux 9 after months of trouble-free activity and I have run across a problem. I logged in as root using GNOME as my session and all I get are blank dialog boxes with stop icons and check buttons.

I can't do much since I cannot see what anything is. I can login using the KDE session and I get the following error message:

"An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for eggcups. Some of your configuraton settings may not work properly."

When I look at the details I get the following:

Failed to contact configuration server, some possible causes are that you need to enable tcp/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See gnome.org/projects/gconf for information. (Details - 1:IOR file '/root/.gconfd/lock/ior' not opened successfully, no gconfd located: no such file or directory 2:IOR file: '/root/.gconfd/lock/ior' not opened successfully, no gconfd located: no such file or directory)

several times.

I do not get the errors if I login with a different user however when I need to enter the root password I get the error again. I have gone to the URL that was provided in the details and it looks like I may have a locking problem. However, I am not sure what to do about it. I tried restarting the service nfslock but that was unsuccessful.

I found another suggestion on another site to delete some .gconfd and .gnome files and directories. I am hesitant to this at this time since I am afraid I might mess up something else. Is that the best way to solve this problem? Any other ideas?

I am interested in any other opinions/ideas/suggestions. Please help me.

Thanks

if you're afraid of deleting something important, then don't delete - instead, rename (move) the files to another name. you'll then know if it helps and then remove the files, or if it causes trouble, move/rename them back..

You won't mess the gnome up by deleting the files/directories in you home directory. You will lose the configurations you made to gnome like wallpaper, theme, etc. This is something I had to do in Red Hat many a time.

Thanks for your help. I moved those files into a new folder just to be sure and it rebuilt new ones and everything is back to normal.

I really appreciate the responses.