GNOME logon lockup with custom kernel

[Chris]

I'm using a from-scratch minimal type kernel as I don't like doing the 
make-kpkg stuff that takes forever to (re)compile.

I've never seen anything like this before.  Everything works until after I 
login and the GNOME desktop starts to initialize (I don't actually see 
anything appear on screen though), then the whole machine freezes.  I 
can't ssh into it or anything.  If I revert to the stock kernel then I 
don't see this problem so there must be something I'm missing or otherwise 
different in my new kernel.  Anyone have any ideas as to what that might 
be?

This may not be an Ubuntu problem.  Maybe something to do with GNOME 2.8, 
I don't know.  I've never seen anything like this on any other 
distro/kernel but they were not using GNOME 2.8 either.

-- 
// Chris