Gnucash not starting properly- probably gconf & dbus related

[David Rowe]

Have just encountered a problem that seems to have come and gone several 
times in the last year It seems to be back again:

After upgrading several ports, Gnucash does not start up properly. Two 
warning windows appear saying:

"An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for 
Gnucash. Some of your configuration settings may not work properly"
&
"Cannot find default values: The configuration data used to specify 
default values for Gnucash cannot be found in the default system 
locations. Without this data GnuCash will still operate properly but it 
may require some extra time to setup. Do you wish to setup the 
configuration data?"

The terminal log reports:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
wombat-on-outback:~ david$ gnucash
gnc.bin-Message: main: binreloc relocation support was disabled at 
configure time.

Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display "/tmp/launch-ruNqs3/:0".
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a 
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a 
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a 
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a 
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a 
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a 
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

After this you can get Gnucash to run but you have to set up all 
preferences and no preferences are saved for the next run.

In the past, the problems seem to be caused - not by GnuCash itself - 
but by Gconf not being able to interact properly with dbus.

My normal Gnucash installation had been working OK for several months. 
Configuration details:
MacBookPro (Intel CPU),  MacOS Leopard 10.5.8, MacPorts 1.8.1

About 2 weeks ago after some routine updates the above problem occurred 
again. I noticed that dbus had just been updated from 1.2.14_1 to 
1.2.16_1 so I tried reverting to 1.2.14_1 and the problem seemed to go 
away. (You have to restart MacOS to restart the dbus daemon). I could 
live with that situation.

However I have decided to transition to Snow Leopard and so I created a 
new MacOS 10.6.1 system on an external drive and then created a new, 
clean  MacPorts installation to go with it. Gnucash was the first 
application I installed and it does NOT work - with the above symptoms. 
I tried retro installing dbus 1.2.14_1, but this time it did not cure 
the problem.
The levels for the relevant ports on Snow Leopard are:  gnucash @2.2.9, 
Revision 3,  gconf @2.26.2,  dbus @1.2.16, Revision 1

So -
Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Does anyone have GnuCash running under Snow Leopard + MacPorts 1.8.1 ?
Can anyone suggest a fix for the above problem?

David Rowe