Can't start daemon, maybe permissions problem?

[futuremonkey]

Fedora 16, KDE spin.

I'm having this problem with vnstat, and already tried the solution posted at that thread.

When I try to start the daemon, this is what shows up in /var/log/messages:

Dec  3 23:52:39 nexus6 vnstatd[6710]: vnStat daemon 1.11 started.               
Dec  3 23:52:39 nexus6 vnstatd[6710]: Error: pidfile failed, exiting.           
Dec  3 23:52:39 nexus6 vnstat[6706]: Starting vnstatd: pidfile: Permission denied

According to /etc/vnstat.conf, the pid file is supposed to be at /var/run/vnstat.pid.

Also, if I configure it to write its log messages to LogFile "/var/log/vnstat.log", the file is never created. It does write its messages to /var/log/messages.

I tried setting SELinux to permissive mode and that didn't help.

Any ideas?

[326bd935]

If you are running as normal user you have to be part of the vnstat group, check which group owns the file with ls -l.

[futuremonkey]

I can run vnstat as a normal user and get realtime info, but since the daemon won't start (and thus the traffic databases are never updated) I can't get cumulative info, which is the only reason I want to use vnstat in the first place.

                      rx      /      tx      /     total    /   estimated
 p2p1: Not enough data available yet.
 wlan0: Not enough data available yet.

.. after a few weeks.

[jpollard]

Try changing the pid file to "/run/vnstat.pid"

Fedora 15/16 have changed and no longer use /var/run.... You might also try making a symbolic link (if /var/run doesn't exist) to /run.

[futuremonkey]

Thanks, but that didn't work either. /var/run is already linked to /run, by the way.

[futuremonkey]

Still no progress on this.

[mrlee]

I have same problem but I found workaround and it works fine!
You need to edit one line in the /etc/rc.d/init.d/vnstat file then
it will work fine:

In the line where it says daemon --user vnstat $VNSTATD_BIN -d
will have to change --user "vnstat" into "root"

You can do this manually or execute this command it will do all this by itself [amazing]:
sudo sed -i 's/daemon --user vnstat/daemon --user root/' /etc/rc.d/init.d/vnstat

it should look like this:

line 37: daemon --user root $VNSTATD_BIN -d

After all this done then:
sudo service vnstat restart


This works for me nice. I'm not sure if this will work for you. But try. Its worth... good day

[mrlee]

Now I have Fedora 17 installed and the same problems with vnstat nothing seems is fixed. I still getting Unable create database backup /var/lib/vnstat/.ppp0
To fix this I exceute this command:
sudo sed -i 's/daemon --user vnstat/daemon --user root/' /etc/rc.d/init.d/vnstat
which makes vnstatd to run as a root (this supposed to fix red/write permission) then I got next error in log - SELinux is preventing vnstatd from using the dac_override capability then I had to make selinux to allow vnstat to do whatever reason was blocked. Then after issuing command sudo service vnstat restart the vnstat is again loging data and is working seems properely if something goes wrong I will post it...

[LinuxBlue]

Re: Can't start daemon, maybe permissions problem?
I have same problem but I found workaround and it works fine!
You need to edit one line in the /etc/rc.d/init.d/vnstat file then
it will work fine:

In the line where it says daemon --user vnstat $VNSTATD_BIN -d
will have to change --user "vnstat" into "root"

You can do this manually or execute this command it will do all this by itself [amazing]:
sudo sed -i 's/daemon --user vnstat/daemon --user root/' /etc/rc.d/init.d/vnstat

it should look like this:

line 37: daemon --user root $VNSTATD_BIN -d

After all this done then:
sudo service vnstat restart

[jpollard]

Perhaps that was all that was needed to avoid the SELinux alert too?