[solved] updates broke gnome

Question

i know this is a stupid and noobish title, but i really couldn't think of a better one.
after a recent update, lots of things broke, and i'm not even sure if they're related to one thing or just issues of their own.
1, after the upgrade, i couldn't log in with slim (i use the inittab method). i tried going to runlevel 3 and starting slim as a daemon, same effect. right after logging in, the hard drive stops and i only have a cursor. tried starting gdm as a daemon, same thing.  the funny thing is that i can start gnome with 'startx'.
2, gnome-panel says the clock applet is broken, but i've seen topics on that.
3, nm-applet asks for a password (probably because i started the session with 'startx'), but upon entering it, the dialog freezes.
i only have one response: wtf?! i'm not a complete noob, but i really can't do anything about this.. is anyone getting these problems? is there a fix/workaround?
thanks,
bamdad
Last edited by bamdad (2010-06-21 20:10:16)

Answer 1

here's my config files, in case someone's interested:
xorg.conf: http://pastebin.org/349146
rc.conf: http://pastebin.org/349149
rc.local (just for completeness): http://pastebin.org/349152
sysctl.conf (again, just for completeness): http://pastebin.org/349157