While recently locking down a Redhat Enterprise Linux box, it was requested that I remove the avahi-autoipd. This is the daemon that provides a '169.254.' address when a network address is unavailable to the system. Once I removed the avahi-autoipd group of software, Gnome Desktop would hang and not come up. Re-installation of the app immediately allowed Gnome to come back. I re-installed all of its components and the system is much happier.