crashing apps

[Brian J. Tarricone]

ok, so i've actually heard this from someone else, so it isn't just me 
being screwy.  for certain apps (verified for gnome-terminal and gedit 
so far), when they're launched from the xfdesktop menu, the apps 
themselves crash shortly after they're spawned.  i converted xfdesktop 
to use xfce_exec() and it still happens.  the crash occurs regardless of 
whether or not the app is from the autogenerated menu or from menu.xml.  
however, with a short 5 line app that just calls xfce_exec() on gedit, 
everything's fine.

of course, since they're gnome2 apps, bug-buddy pops up, but for some 
reason freezes.  i can attach with gdb, but the stack trace doesn't 
appear useful[1].

anyone have any thoughts?  i'm having a bit of trouble chasing this 
down, and i'm not sure where to look.  i could understand if it were 
crashing xfdesktop, but the fact that the app itself that gets launched 
is crashing really bothers me.

ok, this is weirder.  i just messed around with trying to have it fork() 
before calling xfce_exec() (which didn't work, since the spawned process 
quits before g_spawn_asnyc() finishes).  so i put it back to just 
calling xfce_exec(), and now gedit and gnome-terminal don't even start.  
nothing happens.  it's definitely trying to run something (there's a 
printf right before the call), but xfce_exec() returns true and nothing 
happens.  bizarre.

    -brian

[1] stack trace for crashed gedit:

#0  0x404d27e8 in waitpid () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#1  0x47b39bf0 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0
#2  0x47afc6b8 in libgnomeui_module_info_get () from 
/usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0
#3  0x404d14d3 in __pthread_clock_settime () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#4  <signal handler called>
#5  0x00000001 in ?? ()
#6  0x40302074 in _gnome_vfs_process_signal () from 
/usr/lib/libgnomevfs-2.so.0
#7  0x404d14d3 in __pthread_clock_settime () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#8  <signal handler called>
#9  0x40568694 in sigprocmask () from /lib/libc.so.6
#10 0x40337794 in bonobo_activation_server_by_forking ()
   from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#11 0x40336640 in local_activator () from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#12 0x40335d3b in bonobo_activation_internal_service_get_extended ()
   from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#13 0x40335e40 in bonobo_activation_service_get ()
   from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#14 0x4033818c in bonobo_activation_activation_context_get ()
   from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#15 0x4033cbb0 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#16 0x00000096 in ?? ()
#17 0x4032d59f in ?? () from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#18 0x40339480 in ORBit_zero_int () from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
#19 0x4033a5c7 in ORBit_zero_int () from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4