GNOME background problem

[awheelah att net]

Hi,

I'm running Ximian 1.4 on a dual-headed HP Visualize
X-class workstation.  I would like to run xplanet as my
background "setting", but GNOME doesn't seem to want to
release control of the background.  (The "Use GNOME to
set background" button in the Background submenu of the
control center is *not* selected.)

Things I've tried:

 o xsetroot -solid <color> has no effect
 o removing the pixmap that was set as the wallpaper
has     no effect
 o other programs (like xv) cannot seem to overide
the       current background.

Misc:

 o I'm running Debian potato
 o I've compiled the latest XFree86 4.1 dist
 
What is interesting is that if I restart the X server,
xplanet is running underneath the current background.

Any ideas?

-- arw