gnucash dying

[Robert E. Harvey, M.D.]

I've been using  Gnucash for several years on linux platforms.  I 
started with Red Hat and am currently on Gentoo.  I have never had 
problems with gnucash with report writing until this morning.  I am 
using Gnucash 1.8.9.  When trying to access any report from the tool 
bar, the program dies and generates a LCK file.  Trying to use help does 
the same thing, kills the program and generates a lock file.  When 
accessing Gnucash from the command line, I get these messages as the 
program starts up and when it crashes:

Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
 
** CRITICAL **: file gnc-transaction-xml-v2.c: line 443 (set_tran_date): 
assertion `tm' failed.
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
Warning: xaccTransScrubCurrency: no common transaction currency found
 
gtkhtml-ERROR **: gconf error: Failed to contact configuration server (a 
likely cause of this is that you have an existing configuration server 
(gconfd) running, but it isn't reachable from here - if you're logged in 
from two machines at once, you may need to enable TCP networking for ORBit)
 
 
aborting...
Aborted
 What can I do to fix this problem?

Thanks.