drwxr-xr-x 2 kafka root 4096 Oct 18 06:01 /var/lib/kafka/ drwxr-xr-x 2 kafka kafka 4096 Oct 18 06:01 /var/log/kafka/ maybe something like the following in the ebuild (like redis): diropts -m0750 -o kafka -g kafka keepdir /var/{log,lib}/kafka