gnome, soundcard... not working quite right

[Jaron Abbott <jaron@home.com>]

I finally got my net connection up and running, and am most impressed
at how easy it is to install new software using dselect!  My GUI and
soundcard, however, are still not working quite right.

I have a SoundBlaster PCI128.  I recompiled the kernel with the es1370
driver, which is supposed to work.  After rebooting, I tried the
command "more /dev/sndstat", and it said "/dev/sndstat: No such device."
According to the Sound-HOWTO, this means that the module hasn't been
loaded.  This seems quite unnecessary to me, as I compiled the driver
right into the kernel.  And besides, my card <I>is</I> able to produce
sound.

Now, when I started X (I'm using gnome and enlightenment), it gave many
errors.  I eventually figured out that when I ran "esd" as root, that
most of these errors went away.  However, I can only run this command
as root.  There is a CD-ROM player that came with the KDE packages that
I downloaded.  When I tried playing a CD, it complained that /dev/cdrom
did not exist.  After symlinking cdrom to hdd, and chmoding it 666,
this problem went away, but the sound is extremely quiet.  Even with
the volume at 100% on the CD-player, I can hardly hear it (the same
holds when I splay MP3s).  There is also some sort of problem with the
gnome-name-service.  Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks!

Here's my .xsession:
   exec gnome-session

And here's the .xsession-errors:
   xscreensaver-command: no screensaver is running on display :0.0
   xscreensaver disabling server builtin screensaver.
   xscreensaver: you can re-enable it with "xset s on".
   subshell.c: couldn't get terminal settings: Inappropriate ioctl for
device

   ** WARNING **: Could not get name service!

   ** ERROR **: file goad.c: line 606 (real_goad_server_activate):
assertion failed: (name_service != CORBA_OBJECT_NIL)
   aborting...
   rm: cannot remove `/home/jaron/.gnome//gmc-iXVjVx': No such file or
directory

I tried making my .xsession as follows:
   gnome-name-service &
   exec gnome-session

And here's what happened in the .xsession-errors:
  
IOR:014f1c402800000049444c3a6f6d672e6f72672f436f734e616d696e672f4e616d696e67436f6e746578743a312e300002000000caaedfba4000000001010000290000002f746d702f6f726269742d6a61726f6e2f6f72622d31373231383336323936343234373236353030000300000800000000000000010000000000000038000000010100002200000043523737393832382d412e6c6e646e312e6f6e2e776176652e686f6d652e636f6d001009080000000000000001000000
   xscreensaver-command: no screensaver is running on display :0.0
   xscreensaver disabling server builtin screensaver.
   xscreensaver: you can re-enable it with "xset s on".
   subshell.c: couldn't get terminal settings: Inappropriate ioctl for
device
   rm: cannot remove `/home/jaron/.gnome//gmc-VEe1cr': No such file or
directory