Hi All. After using strace -f to follow the child processes, it appears that once it forks, it attempts to access /dev/null (strace output at bottom), then reads the time, opens /dev/log and sends the following line
Feb 26 10:19:06 porky sshd[295]: fatal: daemon() failed: Success It appears to be failing when it tries to access /dev/null. And after a closer look, so are a few other services (this server isn't live yet, and I was mainly concerned with SSH). porky:/var/log# /etc/init.d/postgresql start /usr/lib/postgresql/bin/postgresql-startup: /dev/null: Permission denied porky:/dev# ls -al null -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Feb 26 10:16 null Those permissions are just plain wrong, It should be: crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Dec 1 2000 null I have managed to change it to: -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Dec 1 2000 null However I am still missing the "c", and SSH still isn't working (although postgresql does now). How do I fix the permissions properly? Andrew Tait System Administrator Country NetLink Pty, Ltd E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.cnl.com.au 30 Bank St Cobram, VIC 3644, Australia Ph: +61 (03) 58 711 000 Fax: +61 (03) 58 711 874 "It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix fork() = 1875 [pid 1874] _exit(0) = ? setsid() = 1875 chdir("/") = 0 open("/dev/null", O_RDWR) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_dev=makedev(3, 1), st_ino=3549, st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_nlink=1, st_uid=0, st_gid=0, st_blksize=4096, st_blocks=0, st_size=0, st_atime=2002/02/26-06:25:54, st_mtime=2002/02/26-09:07:18, st_ctime=2002/02/26-09:07:18}) = 0 close(3) = 0 brk(0x8091000) = 0x8091000 time([1014678180]) = 1014678180 open("/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_dev=makedev(3, 1), st_ino=83017, st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_nlink=2, st_uid=0, st_gid=0, st_blksize=4096, st_blocks=8, st_size=785, st_atime=2002/02/26-10:03:00, st_mtime=2002/02/04-18:02:18, st_ctime=2002/02/11-12:23:34}) = 0 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40016000 read(3, "TZif\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\4\0\0\0\4\0"..., 4096) = 785 close(3) = 0 munmap(0x40016000, 4096) = 0 getpid() = 1875 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {0x401e8fa8, [], 0x4000000}, {SIG_DFL}, 8) = 0 socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_DGRAM, 0) = 3 fcntl64(3, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 connect(3, {sin_family=AF_UNIX, path="/dev/log"}, 16) = 0 send(3, "<34>Feb 26 10:03:00 sshd[1875]: "..., 63, 0) = 63 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {SIG_DFL}, NULL, 8) = 0 close(3) = 0 _exit(255) = ?
