Comment 8 for bug 106350

I reproduced the bug this evening.
I logged in, moved the .gnome2/session file away, turned off session-saving, logged out and logged back in. Everything was back to normal then. When examining the session-file, there was no line for metacity (while there is one when everything is normal).
So I think this is what happens, which prevents metacity from starting:
* user presses logout
* metacity crashes and stays down
* gnome saves the state of the session, so without metacity running
* shutdown ----> boot
* user logs in
* gnome reads session file without metacity-line
=> result = no metacity started.
This bug (metacity not starting at login) should thus not happen when you don't save the state of the sessions.
Remaining question is why metacity crashes :)

In attachement is the .gnome2/session-file from right after the crash.