Can't update preferences and can't get rid of Welcome dialog in Gnucash 2.4.7 (OS X 2.6.8)

[prl]

I'm having a problem that seems to be the same as that described by 
Leslie Radke (rlradke5 at att.net) on 25 Feb in gnucash-user, Subject: 
GNU Cash installation issue, except that he describes the problem in 
Gnucash 2.4.0 on Windows, while I'm seeing what looks to be the same 
thing in 2.4.7 on OS X 10.6.8.

The problem is that changes in Preferences don't "stick" across runs of 
Gnucash, and every time I start Gnucash I get the Welcome dialog, even 
though I've both imported a QIF from Quicken for Mac 2005, and set up an 
empty set of accounts from the Welcome dialog.

As was suggested in the replies to Ron (Ron in the signature, Leslie in 
the From line), it appears to be a problem with writing to the GConf 
settings database, and this appears to be confirmed from console 
messages from Gnucash when I run it:
> 31/07/11 13:01:52    [0x0-0x1b01b].org.gnucash.Gnucash[965]    Failed 
> to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/current_tip: No 
> database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value 
> at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/current_tip', as the 
> configuration server has no writable databases. There are some common 
> causes of this problem: 1) your configuration path file 
> /Library/Gnucash-2.4/etc/gconf/2/path doesn't contain any databases or 
> wasn't found 2) somehow we mistakenly created two gconfd processes 3) 
> your operating system is misconfigured so NFS file locking doesn't 
> work in your home directory or 4) your NFS client machine crashed and 
> didn't properly notify the server on reboot that file locks should be 
> dropped. If you have two gconfd processes (or had two at the time the 
> second was launched), logging out, killing all copies of gconfd, and 
> logging back in may help. If you have stale locks, remove 
> ~/.gconf*/*lock. Perhaps the problem is that you attempted to use 
> GConf from two machines at once, and ORBit still has its default 
> configuration that prevents remote CORBA connections - put 
> "ORBIIOPIPv4=1" in /etc/orbitrc. As always, check the user.* syslog 
> for details on problems gconfd encountered. There can only be one 
> gconfd per home directory, and it must own a lockfile in ~/.gconfd and 
> also lockfiles in individual storage locations such as ~/.gconf
There were several similar error messages for different keys (the 
explanation part was always the same, so I've trimmed it):
> Failed to save key 
> /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/show_at_startup: No database 
> available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at key 
> '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/show_at_startup', as the 
> configuration server has no writable databases. ...
> Failed to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/new_user/first_startup: No 
> database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value 
> at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/new_user/first_startup', as the 
> configuration server has no writable databases. ...
> Failed to save key 
> /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_geometry: No database 
> available to save your configuration:Unable to store a value at key 
> '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_geometry', as the 
> configuration server has no writable databases. ...
> Failed to save key 
> /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_position: No database 
> available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at key 
> '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_position', as the 
> configuration server has no writable databases. ...
When I looked in 
/Applications/Gnucash/Contents/Resources/etc/gconf/2/path, the only 
writable config source was:
# Give users a default storage location, ~/.gconf
xml:readwrite:$(HOME)/.gconf

The installation/first startup process hadn't created ~/.gconf, though 
it had created several of the other directories named in one of the 
replies to Ron. I see .aqbanking (but not .banking), .gconfd, .gnome2, 
.gnome2_private, and I have ~/Library/Application\ Support/Gnucash (but 
not .gnucash, but I understand that that is a difference that is 
expected on OS X Gnucash).

Unfortunately, the obvious thing to try, creating a ~/.gconf directory 
(with permissions 700, the same as .gconfd) made no difference, and 
rebooting and logging in again after making the directory also made no 
difference.

The GConf daemon runs whenever Gnucash is running:
Cambyses:~ prl$ ps ajxww | egrep -i 'ppid|gc'
USER       PID  PPID  PGID   SESS JOBC STAT   TT       TIME COMMAND
prl       1087     1  1085 92b7888    0 S      ??    0:00.07 
/Library/Gnucash-2.4/libexec/gconfd-2
prl       1201  1035  1200 92b7c30    2 R+   s000    0:00.00 egrep -i 
ppid|gc
Cambyses:~ prl$
The UID displayed is the effective UID, according to the man page.

Any ideas, anyone? What else should I try? Where else should I look for 
more information about why the gconf settings can't be written? Gnucash 
is pretty inconvenient to use like this!

Peter

-- 

Peter Lamb

Canberra, ACT