Receiving this warning: "cannot create "/opt/splunk/var/log/watchdog"

[dataops]

Why am I receieving this error?

Warning: cannot create "/opt/splunk/var/log/watchdog"

Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied
Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied
Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied

[richgalloway]

This can happen if Splunk is run as root and then run as a non-root user without changing the ownership of all files in /opt/splunk.

[codebuilder]

Agree with Rich, I've seen this behavior in the very same circumstances.

chown the pid file to the user running splunk.
e.g.
chown splunk:splunk /opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid
cycle splunk

[Anam]

Hi @dataops

Thank you for posting your question on Splunk Answers. In order for experts to help you, can you please provide more information in context that resulted in you seeing this error? Were you making changes to the authorize.conf file?

Thanks