I am having the same exact issue described, I did manage to see gnome- settings-daemon mess up when started by hand a few times, and each time it outputted the following message before its death:
$ gnome-settings-daemon a3g3[1159659073,000,xklavier.c:xkl_engine_start_listen/] The backend does not require manual layout management - but it is provided by the applicationCould not initialize GStreamer: unknown error occurred And that's the only output for me, much like the original post. It may or may not start randomly. I haven't seen it fail running under strace -- [Edgy] gnome-settings-daemon acting up https://launchpad.net/bugs/59217 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
