Multi-user problems/questions

[frantzdb admin arhs net]

I've always done everything as root, and I've been trying to set stuff up
for many users.
as a non-root user gnome-session appears to do nothing. Starting panel and
gmc, etc from my .xinitrc script works, but now I'm having the problem
that if I try to do gnome-termianl properties, it crashes with a "broken
pipe" error. same with e-conf if I try to change any settings. I've done
chmod -R a+rwx to /usr/local/* and the user's home directory... no luck...
Ideas?

Thanks,
    Ben