Trouble with gnome-terminal

[Erin Raasch <eraasch chorus net>]

After a few months of running the SuSE 8.0 flavor of linux, I was 
feeling brave and decided  to install Slackware in one of my vacant 
partitions.  It went pretty well, and I've got things running for the 
most part, but I'm having a particular problem with gnome-terminal.  

When I start gnome (v. 1.4), my screen is littered with about a dozen 
error message boxes, all reading the same message:  "There has been an 
error while tyring to log in.  If the SHELL environment variable is 
empty, or there is no specified in the passwd file for your user, one of 
these problems need to be corrected for the to run."  Yes, it appears 
there are a few key words missing, and no, it is not a typo.

When I then open my .gnome/session file, it has about 10-12 entries for 
gnome-terminal, as follows:

8,id=11c0a8000c000103261616600000004280019
8,Program=gnome-terminal
8,CurrentDirectory=/home/eraasch
8,DiscardCommand=rm /home/eraasch/.gnome//gnome-terminal-x3bX9r/
8,CloneCommand=gnome-terminal --sm-config-prefix /gnome-terminal-x3bX9r/
8,RestartCommand=gnome-terminal --sm-config-prefix 
/gnome-terminal-x3bX9r/ --sm-client-id 
11c0a8000c000103261616600000004280019
8,Environment=GNOME_DESKTOP_ICON /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-terminal.png

There are also a corresponding number of gnome-termial files in .gnome/ 
which read like this:

[0]
geometry=0x0+0+0
class=Config
terminal_id=0
font=-*-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*,*-r-*
wordclass=-A-Za-z0-9,./?%&#
scrollpos=right
bell_silenced=false
blinking=false
swap_del_and_backspace=false
del_is_del=false
login_by_default=false
use_bold=true
use_im=true
use_fontset=true
scrollbacklines=100
color_set=0
color_scheme=linux
menubar=true
scrollonkey=true
scrollonoutput=false
transparent=false
shaded=false
scroll_background=false
background_pixmap=false
pixmap_file=
palette=rgb:0000/0000/0000 rgb:aaaa/0000/0000 rgb:0000/aaaa/0000 
rgb:aaaa/5555/0000 rgb:0000/0000/aaaa rgb:aaaa/0000/aaaa 
rgb:0000/aaaa/aaaa rgb:aaaa/aaaa/aaaa rgb:5555/5555/5555 
rgb:ffff/5555/5555 rgb:5555/ffff/5555 rgb:ffff/ffff/5555 
rgb:5555/5555/ffff rgb:ffff/5555/ffff rgb:5555/ffff/ffff 
rgb:ffff/ffff/ffff rgb:bebe/bebe/bebe rgb:0000/0000/0000
invoke_as_login_shell=false
termname=xterm
window_title=Terminal
window_icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-terminal.png
do_utmp=true
do_wtmp=true
start_terminal_factory=false
use_terminal_factory=false
do_lastlog=true

[dummy]
num_terms=1

[factory]
start=0
use=0


I really like the gnome desktop, but I seem to be cursed with problems 
no matter where I go.  Can anyone help with this?

TIA,

Erin