Oooh, interesting. In the hung state, gnome-terminal launched from a panel icon or the gnome menu fails to appear.
But gnome-terminal run from the command line (from an xterm launched from a text console login) actually works. The non-working gnome-terminal hasn't got as far as running gnome-pty- helper. In fact, here's the end of a strace of a hung gnome-terminal: munmap(0xb6ded000, 4096) = 0 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {SIG_IGN}, {SIG_IGN}, 8) = 0 time(NULL) = 1147818268 mkdir("/home/brian/.gnome2", 0700) = -1 EEXIST (File exists) mkdir("/home/brian/.gnome2_private", 0700) = -1 EEXIST (File exists) chmod("/home/brian/.gnome2_private/", 0700) = 0 mkdir("/home/brian/.gnome2/accels", 0700) = -1 EEXIST (File exists) socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 14 uname({sys="Linux", node="ecthelion", ...}) = 0 connect(14, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/tmp/.ICE-unix/9262"}, 21) = 0 fcntl64(14, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 write(14, "\0\1\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8 read(14, [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/bin# ps 9262 PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND 9262 ? Ss 0:01 /usr/bin/gnome-session So its trying to talk to gnome-sessions and getting no reply... -- gconfd not shutting down/not restarting after X server killed https://launchpad.net/bugs/45122 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs