Attribute copying problem with "useradd"

[Chris Tyler]

One of my students showed up with an intriguing issue yesterday. They
added a /home filesystem to their F13 installation, and now "useradd"
fails to completely copy /etc/skel for new users -- it stops copying
with an error on setting attributes on ~/.gnome2

I've looked under the normal rocks and haven't found anything unusual
yet:
* strace shows that the error occurs when attempting to set extended
attributes (presumably facls and selinux context) on the copied file(s)
* it's not SELinux -- switching to permissive mode has no effect
* the /home filesystem is ext4 and mounted with no unusual options
("defaults" in 4th column of /etc/fstab -- mount shows the options as
"(rw)" only).
* reformatting the filesystem does not clear the problem - whether ext3
or ext4, a freshly-created filesystem shows the same issue
* umounting /home clears the problem - useradd can copy the /etc/skel
files to the / filesystem just fine (/ is also an ext4 filesystem)

I'm missing something -- what else should they check out?

-Chris