Please CC me, I'm not subscribed to the list. Okay, to try to isolate the problem shown on my previous post, here is what I did : <snip /etc/init.d/syslog-ng> case "$1" in start) echo -n "Starting system logging: syslog-ng" #start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /usr/local/sbin/syslog-ng strace -f syslog-ng > /var/log/syslog-ng.strace 2>&1 & echo -n " klogd" start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /sbin/klogd -- $KLOGD echo "." ;; </snip> And guess what : when I run syslog-ng thru strace it works!! @#[|%!! Ie when I boot the box syslog-ng is not blocked any more. I finally found a way to make it actually work by not using start-stop-daemon : <snip> #start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /usr/local/sbin/syslog-ng #strace -f syslog-ng > /var/log/syslog-ng.strace 2>&1 & /usr/local/sbin/syslog-ng </snip> simpler! But why?!? ciao