OK, I've had some success on dreamhack.afunalmatata.com making sure gearmand runs, by *not* using $LJHOME/bin/gearmand.

You may want to try the following commands to see what happens:

rm $LJHOME/bin/gearmand # get rid of possible troublemaker
gearmand -d --pidfile=$LJHOME/temp/gearmand.pid -p 17096 # Actually run gearmand
cat $LJHOME/temp/gearmand.pid # Check 1
netstat -A inet -a -n -p | grep 17096 # Check 2
ps auxww | grep -i gearmand # Check 3

(Note: I haven't actually tried running Gearman workers yet - that's next on my list, but since it looks like you have problems with gearmand itself, you may want to try this method.)

For reference, I got the following output from these commands, and if it works for you, the output should be similar:

dh-pauamma@li-166:~/dw/cvs/dw-free$ gearmand -d --pidfile=$LJHOME/temp/gearmand.pid -p 17082
dh-pauamma@li-166:~/dw/cvs/dw-free$ cat $LJHOME/temp/gearmand.pid
6235
dh-pauamma@li-166:~/dw/cvs/dw-free$ netstat -A inet -a -n -p | grep 17082
(Not all processes could be identified, non-owned process info
will not be shown, you would have to be root to see it all.)
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:17082 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 6235/perl
dh-pauamma@li-166:~/dw/cvs/dw-free$ ps auxww | grep -i gearman | less afuna

2953 0.0 0.1 46420 704 pts/4 S Jul18 0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/gearmand
1009 6235 0.0 1.4 46560 7792 ? SN 18:24 0:00 /usr/bin/perl

/usr/local/bin/gearmand -d --pidfile=/dreamhack/8082-pauamma/dw/temp/gearmand.pid -p 17082
1009 6242 0.0 0.1 7452 968 pts/7 SN+ 18:26 0:00 grep -i gearman