> [root@localhost mark]# su - squid > This account is currently not available. > [root@localhost mark]# > Hmmm... *Should* that work? Kind of. It shouldn't work because the system has not given a shell to the user 'squid' (protecting the system against possible security risks.) It should work because "squid" will be used later to run "squidGuard". I start squid in a similar fashion and this is what 'ps -ef' shows us: root 1996 1 0 14:14 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/squid -D -sYC proxy 1998 1996 0 14:14 ? 00:00:00 (squid) -D -sYC proxy 2008 1998 0 14:14 ? 00:00:00 (squidGuard) -c /etc/squid/squid proxy 2009 1998 0 14:14 ? 00:00:00 (squidGuard) -c /etc/squid/squid proxy 2010 1998 0 14:14 ? 00:00:00 (squidGuard) -c /etc/squid/squid You can see that squid runs as root, but then the parent process is ran as "proxy" (the same user as "squid" on your machine). This same "proxy" user runs squidGuard. (side note: I can 'su - proxy' and get a prompt on my machine. ) That could be why your machine is not allowing squidGuard to start. A way for you to find out would be to give a shell to "squid" and then try and log in again as squid. If you get a prompt such as [squid@localhost ~]$ then you know "squid" has a shell, and you should go back to root user and run your 'service squid start' and see if that removes the error from cache.log. If not, restore your /etc/passwd file to what it was before this test and we'll keep looking for why squidGuard starts with errors. brian
