Kismet is meant to be run as root and then drops to the UID of the configured user. The problem is that it requires write access as that user to the directory that it is started in, causing you to either have to change configuration settings or to cd to a dir like /tmp before starting it. I propose that the default configuration file is changed so as to be a little more friendly.
What do you suggest be changed?
Sorry I wasn't more specific, I though you knew what I meant and needed this bug more as a reminder :) Specifically what I was referring to was the bad default setting of logtemplate. I would recommend a minimum change of : logtemplate=/tmp/%n-%d-%i.%l but possibly better would be something like logtemplate=/var/lib/kismet/%n-%d-%i.%l
Fixed in net-wireless/kismet-2005.04.1-r1. Thank you for reporting this.
