gnucash-1.8.4: 2 fatals, 1 log failure so far (FreeBSD-5.1-CURRENT)

[Chris Shenton]

Installed GnuCash and GnuCash-docs from ports on FreeBSD-5.1:

  FreeBSD PECTOPAH.shenton.org 5.1-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.1-CURRENT #2: Tue Jul  1 19:48:37 EDT 2003     chris at PECTOPAH.shenton.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/PECTOPAH  i386

Ports is cvsupped nightly and I just did a portupgrade -R gnucash'*'
to rebuild all recursive dependencies. Here's what the system thinks
it has:

  chris at PECTOPAH<102> pkg_info -c gnucash'*'
  Information for gnucash-1.8.4:
  Comment:
  Quicken-like money and finance manager

  Information for gnucash-docs-1.8.1:
  Comment:
  Documentation for gnucash


I'm a gnucash newbie (used it a bit a year back but haven't since) but
a longtime FreeBSD and UNIX guy; I plead ignorance to all things Gnome :-(.

Here are some major problems I've just noticed trying to use it.
First, I removed old cruft from my long-ago runs so I can work the
druid (which didn't exist back then).

0. First it takes over a minute to startup, with top showing guile
   consuming lots of CPU and memory? This on a 1.8GHz box with 700MB
   RAM, tho I am using it across the LAN with X11.

1. I follow the pop-up tip and click Help to check the Tutorial.
   Screen gets blown away, program dies.  The terminal I started from
   says:

    Fatal error 'Unable to read from thread kernel pipe' at line 1100 in file /usr/src/lib/libc_r/uthread/uthread_kern.c (errno = 0)
    Abort

2. I run gnucash again and do NOT ask for help.  I start creating some
   simple accounts and populating from my checkbook.  Periodically,
   the xterm I started it from complains (non-fatally):

    Error: xaccOpenLog(): cannot open journal 
             13 Permission denied

   It does NOT tell me what file it's trying to open so I can't check
   permissions and such. I'm running it from my homedir so don't
   expect there should be a problem.

   I cross my fingers and do a SaveAs; it does save the file.

3. Now I've forgotten what button I clicked but I think it was a Print
   (very sorry here, lost track).  Again the program died and
   disappeared, again reporting on the xterm:

    Fatal error 'Unable to read from thread kernel pipe' at line 1100 in file /usr/src/lib/libc_r/uthread/uthread_kern.c (errno = 0)
    Abort


Any clues what might be causing this?  How I could track down what
it's trying to do that fail so quickly?

I'm trying a "truss gnucash" right now -- the splash screen hasn't
come up yet -- and most of the lines I see are reporting "ERR#2 'No
such file or directory'", like:

open("/usr/X11R6/lib/gnucash/libXpm.la",0x0,0666) ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.la",0x0,0666)        ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/gnucash/libXpm.la",0x0,0666) ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/local/lib/libXpm.la",0x0,0666)        ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/gnucash/libXpm.la",0x0,0666) ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.la",0x0,0666)        ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/gnucash/libXpm.la",0x0,0666) ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/local/lib/libXpm.la",0x0,0666)        ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/lib/libXpm.la",0x0,0666)                  ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("/usr/lib/libXpm.la",0x0,0666)              ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
open("libXpm.la",0x0,0666)                       ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
access("/usr/X11R6/lib/gnucash/libXpm.so",4)     ERR#2 'No such file or directory'
access("/usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so",4)             = 0 (0x0)

Let me know what I should be looking for. 

I like the functionality I see from gnucash a lot but with the level
of instability I see I'm very worried about getting dependent on it.
I don't want to lose a whole bunch of data-entry time, or worse.

Thanks for all your help.