Neither the daemon nor user=distccd have the required permissions to implement the usage of the "DISTCCD_OPTS="--nice -10" parameter in the /etc/conv.d/distccd configuration file. The /etc/init.d/distccd file should probably be adjusted to use root to start the process then use "--user distccd" to change the user of the started task at the same time calling in the configuration file instead of using the start-stop-daemon. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.set DISTCCD_OPTS="--nice -10" in the /etc/conf.d/distccd file 2./etc/init.d/distccd start 3. Actual Results: distccd[11156] (distccd_parse_options) Warning: nice -10 failed: Permission denied Expected Results: Should have started without warning if the start mechanism had proper permissions. Right now I just use gnome-system-monitor to edit the nice level. But it gets tedious remembering to change the settings on the slave puffins.
I think what I might do is split the common options up into groups in the conf file and then use start-stop-daemon --nicelevel ${DISTCC_NICE} or something. In the morning I'll see if I can find a better solution.
Fixed in CVS. Whoever wrote the initial exposed a bug in start-stop-daemon. If you change user (-c distcc) with start-stop-daemon, it drops root before it changes niceness. The fix is to change users with distccd (--user distcc)
Ok, well I hope someone tells the right people that there is a problem with the daemon. Better to have it fixed than to have server farm go down and gentoo get the blame.