gnome-shell and syslog problems

[Matthew Saltzman]

I have a Fedora 18 machine on which I use gnome-shell as a desktop.
After the last set of updates, I tried to restart.  The machine froze
during shutdown and I had to reset it from the front panel.  Since then,
I can't get gnome-shell to start.  The greeter runs, but when I log in,
I just get the background screen.  My keyboard remaps take hold (I swap
ctrl and caps-lock to get a Sun keyboard feel), but I don't see any
panels.

When I tried to troubleshoot that problem, I discovered
that /var/log/messages* and some other files were empty.  It turns out
that syslogd was dead.  I've found that it simply doesn't start on boot,
but it starts fine when I start it by hand.  dmesg and boot.log appear
normal AFAICT, though there is nothing in them related to syslog.

I've tried googling for solutions, but I haven't find a good set of
search terms to target.

Can anyone suggest how to start troubleshooting either of these
problems?

TIA.
-- 
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu