building 1.4 (CentOS 4.4) MYSQL 99% home [unclas]

[Long]

>Are all the log files in /var/log/radius writable by the user you are running 
>radiusd as?
>
Configured to run as nobody:nobody. chmod -R nodody:nobody /usr/local/var/log/radiusd allows me to run it as nobody now, but if I do "radiusd > radlog &" the radlog still only contains the first line "Starting - reading configuration files..." - although it does run and I can ps the process. Should I change permissions on all the other (/usr/local/etc/raddb..., /usr/local/share/freeradius...) files? I would very much appreciate a dir-by-dir listing of someone else's permissions, including the relevant libraries.

Is there anything wrong with my "radiusd > radlog &" (as root), considering I am including the "&" while the process drops to background anyway? And does the user need to have a real shell, as nobody is nologin?

-Andrew