I'm having similar (but not quite exactly) the same problem. gnome-panel
is remembering its' applets, but randomly for no apparant reason
gnome-session will decide not to start its' Window Manager (in my case
Enlightenment). I've found that by not saving the session on logout, these
problems seem to go away. It's not a permanent solution, but it may help
for the time being.

Jared

On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, Rafal Boni wrote:

> Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 02:24:21 -0400
> From: Rafal Boni <rafal@mediaone.net>
> To: current-users@netbsd.org
> Subject: gnome-panel (from pkgsrc gnome-core-1.0.55.1) bugs?
> 
> Folks:
> 	Is anyone using a recent a GNOME package from pkgsrc succesfully?
> 	Discounting the core files from various gnome components I see in 
> 	my home directory, things work mostly OK with one BIG exception.
> 
> 	No matter how many times I configure the panel, when I restart X
> 	(either because I logged out, rebooted the box, etc.), I lose all
> 	panel settings for 'external' applets.  It looks like the files in 
> 	~/.gnome/panel.d/ all are present and look AFAICT correct.  However,
> 	my clock applet, CPU load applet and mixer applet never stay more 
> 	than a session (sometime, I can't even add them, they simply never 
> 	make it to the panel).
> 
> 	I'm trying to track it down, but I know next to nothing about GNOME, 
> 	so I figured I'd see if others had seen this and solved/worked around
> 	it in some way.  If not, I'll file a PR when I figure out a bit more.
> 
> Thanks!
> --rafal
> 
> pkg_info for related packages follows (since i've got quite a bit of un-related
> stuff from pkgsrc installed):
> 
> gmake-3.78.1
> libghttp-1.0.4
> pth-1.3.3
> glib-1.2.7
> gindent-2.2.5
> gettext-0.10.35
> ORBit-0.5.0
> libaudiofile-0.1.9
> esound-0.2.17
> perl-5.00404
> gtk+-1.2.7
> libbungif-4.1.0
> jpeg-6b
> tiff-3.5.4
> png-1.0.6
> netpbm-19940301
> imlib-1.9.8
> xpm-3.4k
> gnome-libs-1.0.56
> guile-1.3.4
> libgtop-1.0.6
> gnome-core-1.0.55.1
> Mesa-3.0
> Xaw3d-1.5
> lesstif-0.89.9
> xscreensaver-3.23
> m4-1.4
> control-center-1.0.51
> ee-0.3.11
> gdm-2.0b4
> glade-0.5.3
> gmc-4.5.42
> gnome-audio-1.0.0
> gnome-chess-0.2.4
> gnome-games-1.0.51
> gnome-media-1.0.51
> bison-1.28
> gnome-pim-1.0.55
> gtkglarea-1.2.1
> libxml-1.8.5
> libglade-0.11
> python-1.5.2
> gnome-utils-1.0.51
> ghostscript-5.50
> ghostscript-x11-5.50
> ggv-0.50
> gtk---1.0.3
> gtk-engines-0.8
> xchat-1.4.1
> fnlib-0.5
> freetype-1.2
> enlightenment-0.16.2
> econf-0.15
> ethemes-0.1
> acroread-4.05
> autoconf-2.13
> gnome-print-0.16
> gnumeric-0.48
> 
> ----
> Rafal Boni                                                   rafal@mediaone.net
>