The gconfd-2 daemon is run by many GNOME applications to manage
configurations.  Gconfd-2 remains running for some time after the
application which used it quits.  This allows other applications to use
gconfd-2 without having to start and stop the daemon too much.  This is a
good idea.

The problem comes when a system tries to unmount a user's home directory
when the user logs out.  For example, pam_mount unmounts an encrypted home
directory when I log out of my system.

Gconfd-2 continues to run even when a user logs out.  This causes the
unmounting of the user's home directory to fail because gconfd-2 keeps the
following files open:

/home/user/.gconfd/lock/<random string>
/home/user/.gconf/%gconf-xml-backend.lock/<random string>
/home/user/.gconfd/saved_state

Gconfd-2 should exit or close the above files when a user logs out.