Bug 384053 – app-admin/syslog-ng-3.2.4 unable to write pid file

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Bjarke Istrup Pedersen (RETIRED) 2011-09-22 08:57:56 UTC]

Hey,

I seems to be having problem starting syslog-ng on one of my servers.

when I start it, I get this error:

 * Caching service dependencies ...                                       [ ok ]
 * Stopping syslog-ng ...
 * start-stop-daemon: fopen `/var/run/syslog-ng.pid': No such file or dir [ ok ]
 * Starting syslog-ng ...
syslog-ng: Error creating pid file; file='/var/run/syslog-ng.pid', error='Permission denied'    

syslog-ng is started just fine, but the pid file is not written.

Here is my emerge --info :

Portage 2.2.0_alpha59 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/no-multilib, gcc-4.5.3, unavailable, 3.0.4-gentoo x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-3.0.4-gentoo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i7_CPU_860_@_2.80GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.3
Timestamp of tree: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 02:45:01 +0000
app-shells/bash:          4.2_p10
dev-lang/python:          2.7.2-r3, 3.2.2
dev-util/pkgconfig:       0.26
sys-apps/baselayout:      2.0.3
sys-apps/openrc:          0.9.3-r1
sys-apps/sandbox:         2.5
sys-devel/autoconf:       2.68
sys-devel/automake:       1.11.1-r1
sys-devel/binutils:       2.21.1-r1
sys-devel/gcc:            4.5.3-r1
sys-devel/gcc-config:     1.4.1-r1
sys-devel/libtool:        2.4-r1
sys-devel/make:           3.82-r3
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 2.6.39 (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc:           2.13-r4
Repositories: gentoo
Installed sets:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles fixpackages news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
FFLAGS=""
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org/"
LC_ALL="en_DK.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
MAKEOPTS="-j6 -s"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
SYNC="rsync://rsync.de.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="acl ads amd64 blksha1 bzip2 caps client curl dhcp fam hardened idn ikev1 ikev2 ipv6 ldap logrotate lzma mta nat ncurses netapi nfsv3 nls nptl oldnet openssl pam pam_krb5 python readline sasl server sha1 sha512 smbclient snmp ssl symlink syslog threads unicode usb winbind xml zlib" ELIBC="glibc" KERNEL="linux" USERLAND="GNU"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[Comment 1 Mr. Bones. (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:01:47 UTC]

It's probably that you're trying to use caps and didn't set things up properly, but attach your syslog-ng.conf file and /etc/conf.d/syslog-ng in case there's something there that's causing issues.

[Comment 2 Bjarke Istrup Pedersen (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:13:07 UTC]

Created attachment 287733 [details]
conf.d file

[Comment 3 Bjarke Istrup Pedersen (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:13:28 UTC]

Created attachment 287735 [details]
syslog-ng.conf

[Comment 4 Bjarke Istrup Pedersen (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:13:43 UTC]

There you go :)

[Comment 5 Mr. Bones. (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:21:08 UTC]

Oh, you're using hardened.  I don't support that config.  Reassigning to the hardened team.

[Comment 6 Christian Ruppert (idl0r) 2011-09-25 20:29:41 UTC]

It doesn't look like he's using hardened.

"Portage 2.2.0_alpha59 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/no-multilib, gcc-4.5.3,
unavailable, 3.0.4-gentoo x86_64)"

Reassign.

[Comment 7 Mr. Bones. (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:41:17 UTC]

Then the hardened use flag shouldn't be set.  That's for the hardened profiles.  Also, unless you really know how to use caps you should unset that use flag as well.

[Comment 8 Bjarke Istrup Pedersen (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 20:53:04 UTC]

Removing the caps use flag fixes the problem.

I'm not removing the hardened use flag, since it causes it to install a very limited syslog-ng.conf file.

Btw. why does the non-hardened use flag version of syslog-ng not split the logfile out into different files?

[Comment 9 Mr. Bones. (RETIRED) 2011-09-25 21:48:51 UTC]

The simple config file simplifies the rotation support and, since most people don't need broken-out log files generally makes support easier.  People who need or desire more complicated configs usually have particular needs so would need to configure syslog-ng to fit their specific needs anyhow.

Glad things are working for you now.