RHEL 4 Update 5

When some users ssh -X to a server and run gedit, it hangs. Other users, it starts-up fine. xlock/xterm work fine for everyone, so it's not a magic cookie issue. There are no errors, no corresponding /var/log/messages, nothing. csh or bash makes no known difference. If I strace gedit for users having problems, it sits forever at:

connect(17, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path=@/tmp/fam-username-}, 110

where 'username' is the username of the user having trouble. I'm guessing it's trying to connect to a local socket that won't accept the connection??

I've tried removing .gnome .gnome2 .metacity .gconf .gconfd .gnome2-private for these users in case it's their GNOME environment, all to no avail. kate also hangs so it doesn't seem GNOME-specific. I've checked other servers of ours where these users are not having issues, and I see no differences between the servers. disk space is fine. It is user specific and 100% reproduceable. I don't see any fam packages but gamin is the same version on the broken server, and servers where it works.

Any ideas what else I need to look at?? Thanks for any help.