I somehow got a corrupted .gnome/gnorpm.d/resources/fullIndex.rdf.gz file
in the last week or so.  (gzip complained about a premature EOF when I
tried to examine it.) This causes major problems with the preferences menu
and webfind rendering both of them useless and unrecoverable.  The
preferences menu core dumps and webfind hangs.  Manually deleting the file
and allowing it to download a fresh copy seems to solve the problem.  Not a
good solution for Joe User Jr. though.  Yet another example of gnorpm's
fragility in the face of bad or missing data files.  The preferences pop up
seems particularly bad about this, dumping core at the slightest
provocation.  If there isn't a simple fix I'd almost suggest adding a
button that essentially says "I think the config/data files are hosed.
Please clear the bad ones out and get or generate nice clean ones."  At
least then a user could restore the application to a working state.