[syslog-ng] Error opening log file for writing

[Bill Snow]

I have a openSUSE 11.3 system that I installed syslog-ng on through 
package management.  The intention of the simple config is to get it to 
write log file messages from one program (pdns) to a separate log file 
outside of /var/log.

No matter what I do with the file and directory permissions, I always get
something like:
   syslog-ng[17864]: Error opening file for writing;
   filename='/opt/home/user/logs/pdns.log', error='Permission
   denied (13)'
in the log file.

syslog-ng is running as root, as follows:

# ps xo pid,ppid,user,cmd | grep syslog
17863     1 root     supervising syslog-ng
17864 17863 root     /sbin/syslog-ng

The special config lines in /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf look like this:

filter f_dyson      { match('^pdns'); };
destination dyson   { file("/opt/home/user/logs/pdns.log" perm(0644)); };
log                 { source(src); filter(f_dyson); destination(dyson); };


Googling around indicated a possible problem with capability management, 
but that is turned off in my version:

# syslog-ng --version
syslog-ng 3.1.1
Installer-Version: 3.1.1
Revision: 
ssh+git://bazsi@git.balabit//var/scm/git/syslog-ng/syslog-ng-ose--mainline--3.1#master#8747d74491eac3fdf5052194f47a68e659633ca9
Compile-Date: Jul  5 2010 13:47:02
Enable-Threads: off
Enable-Debug: off
Enable-GProf: off
Enable-Memtrace: off
Enable-Sun-STREAMS: off
Enable-Sun-Door: off
Enable-IPv6: on
Enable-Spoof-Source: on
Enable-TCP-Wrapper: on
Enable-SSL: off
Enable-SQL: off
Enable-Linux-Caps: off
Enable-Pcre: on

I tried explicitly setting the user/group for the destination file in case 
syslog-ng was trying to write the file with a non-privileged owner in a 
directory owned by root.... and also tried setting the directory 
permissions to 777 just in case.


Moving the destination to /var/log/pdns.log works.  Of course that's not 
where I want the file.


Anybody have an idea of what might be going on here?

Thanks,

Bill Snow