bus error with gst-launch and gst-launch

I know this has to be some stupid linux thing that I'm just to thick to see but here's what I'm seeing. 

If I connect to my Leopardboard 368 board via the serial port terminal (using mincom) and try to run gst-launch or gst-inspect, the applications imediately with exits with the message "bus error". 

However if log into the board using ssh as a user I've created gst-lauch and gst-inspect at least try to run normally (I get permission errors about accessing the video devices and what not). 

If I then us su to switch back to root user and try to run gst-launch or gst-inspect I again get the "bus error" message. So what gives, this smells like a missing shared library or library that's not been cross compiled for arm etc but I don't know how to debug it.  Some help would be appricated. 

Thanks, 

Matt S.