diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index f4c7a6879..67bdc5519 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+2007-11-19  Lucas Rocha  <lucasr@gnome.org>
+
+	* src/main.c (main): try to get the session client ID from 
+	DESKTOP_AUTOSTART_ID environment variable in case the --sm-client-id 
+	is not used. Closes #498033.
+
 2007-11-17  Thomas Thurman  <thomas@thurman.org.uk>
 
         * configure.in: Post-release bump to 2.21.3.
diff --git a/src/main.c b/src/main.c
index e46cac129..8319fba7c 100644
--- a/src/main.c
+++ b/src/main.c
@@ -382,8 +382,23 @@ main (int argc, char **argv)
    * info
    */
   if (!meta_args.disable_sm)
-    meta_session_init (meta_args.client_id, meta_args.save_file);
+    {
+      if (meta_args.client_id == NULL)
+        {
+          const gchar *desktop_autostart_id;
+  
+          desktop_autostart_id = g_getenv ("DESKTOP_AUTOSTART_ID");
+ 
+          if (desktop_autostart_id != NULL)
+            meta_args.client_id = g_strdup (desktop_autostart_id);
+        }
 
+      /* Unset DESKTOP_AUTOSTART_ID in order to avoid child processes to
+       * use the same client id. */
+      g_unsetenv ("DESKTOP_AUTOSTART_ID");
+
+      meta_session_init (meta_args.client_id, meta_args.save_file);
+    }
   /* Free memory possibly allocated by the argument parsing which are
    * no longer needed.
    */