Okay, the directory is in ld.so.conf but dosn't show up when I do an $PATH... Does it only do bin and sbin directories and not lib's? I'm not quite sure what the $PATH is, some sort of registry?

updatedb is for updating locates database, which is a search program. It will let you search for things like filenames that you think might be missing, etc...

you do not need libs in your path, only commands that you are going to issue

path is like a search path for your shell
$ echo $PATH
/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/david/bin

you issue a comand like


xinit

if it is not in the first directory in your path then the next directory in the path will be checked, and so on untill the command is found in /usr/X11R6/bin

if that directory was not in the path you will get command not found

libs have ld.so.cache

my ld.so.cache looks like this...

ld.so-1.7.0
E
H
Z
p
y
?
?
?
?
?
E
H
Z
p
y
?
?
?
?
?

-----

is that normal? I have my lib directories in ld.so.conf, should I move them over to ld.so.cache and that should correct my problem?

you are not really meant to use it in that way
put the lib paths in /etc/ld.so.conf and run /sbin/ldconfig
that's all there is to it

other than that you just don't have the libs installed

search for the exact filename your missing at rpmfind.net

in some cases I have created links to libs

for instance lets say a program complains that you need somelib-2.so.3 and you have somelib-2.so.4

I have created it using this

ln -s somelib-2.so.4 somelib-2.so.3


of course this should be done as a last resort. You should install the proper libs.