The /etc/logrotate.d/syslog-ng placed by app-admin/syslog-ng-1.6.9 is incorrect. On line 10, instead of "reload" it should say "restart", as Gentoo's init.d scripts have no "reload" command.
/etc/init.d/syslog-ng <snip> reload() { if [ ! -f /var/run/syslog-ng.pid ]; then eerror "syslog-ng isn't running" return 1 fi checkconfig || return 1 ebegin "Reloading configuration and re-opening log files" kill -HUP `cat /var/run/syslog-ng.pid` &>/dev/null eend $? } </snip> # emerge -pv syslog-ng These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild R ] app-admin/syslog-ng-1.6.9 USE="-hardened -static tcpd" 747 kB