When I start Gnome (using mdk galaxy theme)and check running services in Mandrake 9.1, I find 8 > 10 "pam-panel-icon"'s running at 4.2 mb each ( see where I'm going with this? ). From what I can work out, they're indicators for the pam_timestamp_check service (which works like sudo) and runs within them at 488K apiece and show up on the panel / taskbar occasionally as small gold keys (removing the notification area from the panel doesn't remove the processes).

Fair enough. Except I'm not (AFAIK) using the timestamp check in pam - I saw the process usage, discovered that most of the checks were optional (whether it passed or failed made no difference to authentication) and disabled the "pam_timestamp.so" checks in Webmin.

I double-checked by looking through /etc/pam.d/ to make sure I hadn't missed any, but the processes are still there, even after reboot.

I don't have these processes in fluxbox or KDE3, but I like Gnome.

Before I strip out and replace gnome, does anyone have any ideas? This hasn't occurred in mdk 9 or 8.2 and I don't have this problem with Slack. The system is fully patched, doesn't have anything exotic running and apart from this gives me no problems.

Edit: Now have a possible ( & dirty) fix:

$: mv /usr/bin/pam-panel-icon /home

to stop the file being run.

No complaints from Gnome so far.