> Are you running it as root? I's say he is - I have a fedora 8 box (squid is not actually used on this box AFAIK); [cartera@fedora8vm ~]$ service squid start sed: can't read /etc/squid/squid.conf: Permission denied init_cache_dir /var/spool/squid... /etc/init.d/squid: line 68: /var/log/squid/squid.out: Permission denied Starting squid: /etc/init.d/squid: line 72: /var/log/squid/squid.out: Permission denied [FAILED] [cartera@fedora8vm ~]$ su Password: [root@fedora8vm cartera]# service squid start init_cache_dir /var/spool/squid... Starting squid: . [ OK ] [root@fedora8vm cartera]# Steve, can you post the output of 'netstat -anp | grep 81' (it should find nothing).