Hmm. I discovered that any gnome application fails with the same error message.
##> gnome-terminal The program 'gnome-terminal' received an X Window System error. This probably reflects a bug in the program. The error was 'BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length erro'. (Details: serial 14 error_code 16 request_code 158 minor_code 4) (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously; that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it. To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.) ##> ./gnome-perfmeter The program 'gnome-perfmeter' received an X Window System error. This probably reflects a bug in the program. The error was 'BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length erro'. (Details: serial 14 error_code 16 request_code 158 minor_code 4) (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously; that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it. To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.) This message posted from opensolaris.org
