Panel and broken pipe errors

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows brown edu>]

  Hi.  I've been having a problem for a while which caused dpkg to fail while
unpacking files with the message "gzip: stdout: broken pipe".  I had some
trouble tracking it down; at first I thought it only affected Eterms, but now
I've discovered that it affects any terminal (at least, xterm, gnome-term, or
Eterm) that I open from the panel.  A good litmus test for this is to run man
and see if it prints the same error when you quit.  Anyway, does anyone know
what the problem could be?

-- 
  Daniel Burrows

  Nothing is hopeless.

  PROOF:
(a) Assume the opposite.
(b) If something _is_ hopeless, then its condition can only improve.
(c) If its condition can only improve, then there must be hope for it.
(d) Therefore, nothing is hopeless.  QED.