[syslog-ng]confusing error message in syslog-ng

Ed Ravin syslog-ng@lists.balabit.hu
Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:16:46 -0500


I'm using syslog-ng version 1.6.5 on NetBSD 1.5.4.

I added a new output file to my syslog-ng configuration and got this
error message:

   Jan 10 16:16:17 syslogng@localhost[14437]: Cannot open file /syslog/services/filers.udp^@2005/01/filers.udp.2005.01.10 for writing (Permission denied)

Note the ^@ NULL character in the log in the filename.  This confused me
no end, wondering if I had somehow corrupted my config file - as the
character in that position was another / character.  I spent extra time
checking my config and running "od -c" looking for the null character.

It turned out that /syslog/services was owned by root and syslog-ng
was running as a local user, and thus didn't have permission to
create a new directory there.  Fixing the permissions solved the problem.
So the error message was accurate, except for the corrupted filename.

Where's that NULL coming from?