working directory not writable

[D. Stussy]

"Steven P Vallière" <bind9 at e-visions.com> wrote in message
news:g5kv45$1cfg$1 at sf1.isc.org...
> I just read through a recent discussion about this
> problem(?), which I also have on my system, but saw
> mostly arguments about the merits of various OSes
> and configurations.  I didn't see anything about the
> actual issue itself, so I'm going to ask again, and
> begin with the results of my own experiments...
>
> When I upgraded to the latest BIND9, I discovered
> that a new check had been added that was causing
>
> 'the working directory is not writable'
>
> to be logged when named started.  Within a minute or
> two though, named started /writing/ to files in that
> directory anyway (well, their content and timestamps
> changed, I /think/ that qualifies as writing).

I noted the same error message (which seems to have disappeared under
9.5.1b1), and also disregarded it as either a check before named switched to
its user ID from the superuser (with priv's dropped before the check) or an
indication that the root filesystem was mounted read-only on account of
unresolvable errors (about the same time, I did start seeing bad sectors on
the drive).