can not start a program in /usr/bin as root
 

I can not get this sound server /usr/bin/esd to start.
I'm root. utils_alsa-info.sh reports that no other sound
servers are running and this is the only one on Lubuntu
now.
root@ed-System-Product-Name:/usr/bin# whoami
root
root@ed-System-Product-Name:/usr/bin# ls -l | grep "esd"
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39304 Oct 1 20:54 esd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 49 Dec 6 2011 mpg123-esd
root@ed-System-Product-Name:/usr/bin# esd
bash: /usr/bin/esd: No such file or directory
root@ed-System-Product-Name:/usr/bin# /usr/bin/esd
bash: /usr/bin/esd: No such file or directory
root@ed-System-Product-Name:/usr/bin# ./esd
bash: ./esd: No such file or directory

I hope this is something dumb and easy.
Anyone have any ideas ?

It may be the file has hidden characters in the name. Since you did "grep esd" it found the file so presumably the letters do appear in that order but they may be prepended or appended by other hidden characters.

What happens if you run "ls esd" and "ls /usr/bin/esd" instead of "ls | grep esd"?

Also the prompt seems to show that you are in /usr/bin but you might want to verify it with a "pwd" command. Sometimes prompts are statically set due to poorly setup PS1 variable. (e.g. if you did "PS1=/usr/bin" your prompt would always be /usr/bin even if you were in /root/billybob or somewhere else.)

If you're sure you're in /usr/bin and the ls command doesn't show the file then you can do something like "ls -b *esd* and see if you have any escapes (\) showing in the file name. Or "ls *esd* |cat -vT" to see all tabs/non-printing character possitions in the file name.