> I haven't tried restarting yet - but given that "ping localhost" works > with the firewall(s) in place do you still think that this is my problem? It could still be, so the restarting with all Firewalling off should still be tried. > > I still think that the "Permission denied" message is caused by file > ownership problems - but where? > > There shouldn't be if SquidGuard runs under the same user as squid (defined in squid.conf). Btw, do you start SQUID as root ? Even if no privileged port is used for http-receiving, I would still start as root. I am not sure whether this inter process communication , which goes via the loopback interface , may need root privilege to create the socket. I am not sure about that. M.