tail -f /var/log/messages
Jul 23 04:44:36 www (squid): failed to find or read error text file.
Jul 23 04:44:36 www squid[9440]: Squid Parent: child process 9484 exited due to signal 6
Jul 23 04:44:39 www squid[9440]: Squid Parent: child process 9497 started
Jul 23 04:44:39 www (squid): failed to find or read error text file.
Jul 23 04:44:39 www squid[9440]: Squid Parent: child process 9497 exited due to signal 6
Jul 23 04:44:39 www squid[9440]: Exiting due to repeated, frequent failures
Jul 23 04:45:01 www mgetty[9392]: init chat failed, exiting...: Interrupted system call
Jul 23 04:45:01 www mgetty[9392]: failed in mg_init_data, dev=ttyS0, pid=9392
Jul 23 04:45:01 www crond(pam_unix)[9574]: session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul 23 04:45:02 www crond(pam_unix)[9574]: session closed for user root

Sorry, you're going to have to post some better information, before anyone can help you. You don't say what version/distro of Linux you're using, what version of squid, in what environment. We'd also need to see your squid configuration.

Where are your error files located? Did you check the permissions on those directories? Did you compile squid from source, or get a prebuilt version? Check those permissions first. Also, Google has quite a bit of information on those errors.

i am getting this error in a fedora core3 machine which was configured by someone a few year's back.."squid configtest" is not showing any errors.i am not able to stop,restart or start squid now.i don't know what the problem is and what should be the original permissions for the squid related files.

Had asked about your squid configuration, but you still don't give any details about it. FC3 is ANCIENT...the latest is 11, so I'd strongly suggest upgrading at some point.

To start/stop squid, you need to be root, and run the "/etc/init.d/squid stop" (or start) script. Again, look in the config file, and you should see where the files are going. Check the permissions on that directory. If the squid user is running as user "squid", the directory should be owned by "squid", and have permissions like "-rwxr-xr-x" for a file, and "drwxr-xr-x" for a directory. If not, look at the chmod and chown commands, and read the man pages.