Gnome desktop icons disappeared in unstable

[Daniel Katz <dkatz@profitlogic.com>]

Hi.

        I recently dist-upgrade'd my 'unstable' box, and found that
the Gnome desktop icons (both those I had defined and those which were
predefined in the packages) were gone.  They still seem to exist in my
gnome-desktop, but they just don't show up on the screen.  I also
noticed that my right-button no longer seems to bring up the relevant
menu when clicked on the background and that I can no longer create
desktop icons at all.

        I have tried downgrading gmc and mc-common, but this does not
restore the functionality.  I have been browsing this list and the
Debian bug tracking system, but did not see this described anywhere
else.

        It is as if the desktop functionality has been "turned off"
somehow.  Does anyone have a good idea about how to deal with this?

Dan

P.S.  I am using gmc_4.5.51-17_i386.deb, and would guess that whatever
changed to break my system has occurred in the past 3 weeks, since
that's the period of my updates (more or less).  Note that I am not
sure that gmc is the culprit -- that's just a guess.