GNOME has suddenly stopped working on one of my machines running Scientific
Linux 3.0.5.  When I reboot the machine, everything is OK until it tries to
run gdm, and then the screen flashes for a while before finally displaying
an error message "Failed to start the display server several times in a
short time period".  If I edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop so that the machine
runs kdm or xdm instead, then the login banner is displayed, but users who
run GNOME cannot log in (users who do not run GNOME can, so it isn't an X
problem).

I am not aware of having changed anything relevant recently.  I have the
nightly yum update enabled, and recently I tried unsuccessfully to install
the MASS 7 library for Splus (http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/MASS4/ - I'd be
surprised if this was relevant, but I mention it anyway just in case).  In
the course of trying to get MASS 7 working, I ran synaptic and installed
java-1.4.2-sun-compat, but these were the only recent changes.

Dr Eva Myers
Computer Officer, Statistical Laboratory.