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?