I can reliably reproduce this on feisty as of the date of this comment. The system logs in, gnome splashes and then the session load halts.
A quick ps x | grep esd shows 15060 ? Ss 0:00 /bin/sh -c /usr/bin/esd -terminate -nobeeps -as 1 -spawnfd 24 15061 ? SL 0:00 /usr/bin/esd -terminate -nobeeps -as 1 -spawnfd 24 Which leads me to believe that bug #86162 may also be related. Killing off both esd instances lets gnome-session to continue loading. -- esound causes desktop session to hang https://launchpad.net/bugs/21915 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs