Comment 9 for bug 9863

(In reply to comment #0)
> You logout of Gnome. Later you login, but you get an error box stating that
> gnome-panel could not start because it detected another instance of itself
> running. Either the panel wasn't killed at logout, or it tries to start itself
> twice. I suspect the latter as I see other apps (via the bottom of the Gnome
> splash) occasionally appear to try to start twice.
>
> Problem seems to be random and cannot be repeated at will.
>

I have the same behaviour here on an up to date hoary box.
I can say that it probably not a gnome-session issue because I have no session
stuff saved (i.e. ls ~/.gnome2/*sess* gives no files).
It doesn't happen everytime.
When it does happen I head to a console and typing 'ps aux | grep panel' will
give me a line with 'gnome-panel --sm-client-id default2' in it. Once I kill
this things work fine.