Gnome not starting.. (after a crash)

[Paul Schulz <pschulz@foursticks.com.au>]

Greetings,

'Gnome' is not starting up anymore, and I'm not able to run 
gnome applications:

It opens a connection on the localhost to port 16001,
and waits, but doesn't get anything.. and seems to just be hanging.

What is this port?  I don't know how the gnome system works, so any
pointers (to documentation or whatever) would be useful.

Running 'strace' on a gnome application gives
---8<--(snip)---------------------------------------------------------
open("/etc/popt", O_RDONLY)             = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
getuid()                                = 1001
geteuid()                               = 1001
open("/home/paul/.popt", O_RDONLY)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/tmp/.esd/socket", R_OK|W_OK)   = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_IP) = 3
fcntl(3, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC)           = 0
setsockopt(3, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, [1], 4) = 0
connect(3, {sin_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(16001), sin_addr=inet_addr("0.0.0.0")}}, 16) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {0x403a9eb0, [], SA_RESTART|0x4000000}, {SIG_DFL}, 8) = 0
open("/home/paul/.esd_auth", O_RDONLY)  = 4
read(4, "\r\37C@\340\32C@\314\373\377\277\0\236\0@", 16) = 16
write(3, "\r\37C@\340\32C@\314\373\377\277\0\236\0@", 16) = 16
write(3, "NDNE", 4)                     = 4
read(3,  <unfinished ...>

---8<--(snip)---------------------------------------------------------

Paul