gnome-terminal fails to start on some accounts :(

My first question is where does :
GNOME_TERMINAL_SERVICE gets defined, or set in the environment?

> #define TERMINAL_ENV_SERVICE_NAME               "GNOME_TERMINAL_SERVICE"
> #define TERMINAL_ENV_SCREEN                     "GNOME_TERMINAL_SCREEN"

where does the output of :
terminal_printerr ("%s\n\n", error->message);

go? to a log file? where?

Since there is legacy code that appears to need some missing environ 
defines, i just dont know who to talk to, as there does not seem to be a 
list for gnome-terminal