gconfd-2 does not exit when a user log out, breaks unmounting home

[mike at flyn.org]

I have been having some trouble with gconfd-2 (currently using GConf2-2.4.0
from RawHide PPC) for quite some time.  I tried to get some discussion going
on Red Hat's Bugzilla quite a while ago but nothing really came of it.  I'd
be willing to work on a patch, but I'd like to come to consensus on the
technique we should use to fix the problem.  I thought perhaps I would try
this forum.

The gconfd-2 daemon is run by many GNOME applications to manage
configurations.  Gconfd-2 remains running for some time after the application
which used it quits.  This allows other applications to use gconfd-2 without
having to start and stop the daemon too much.  This is a good idea.

The problem comes when a system tries to unmount a user's home directory when
the user logs out.  For example, pam_mount unmounts an encrypted home
directory then I log out of my system.  Other people use NFS or other means
to mount home directories.

Gconfd-2 continues to run even when a user logs out.  This causes the
unmounting of the user's home directory to fail because gconfd-2 keeps the
following files open:

/home/user/.gconfd/saved_state

In addition, when using GNOME 2.4, there are four new programs that seem to
hang around unwelcome for a second after logging out (at least they are still
around when PAM session closing code is run).  This is partially documented
in bug #106826.  The four programs are:

bonobo-activation-server (home direcotry remains open as CWD?)
gnome-settings-daemon (home direcotry remains open as CWD?)
xscreensaver -nosplash (home direcotry remains open as CWD?)
mapping-daemon (home direcotry remains open as CWD?)

Red Hat Bugzilla bugs #67605, #75895 and #106826 comment more on this
problem.

--
Mike