I have installed Dionaea in a test environment and I have had success getting it to start. With that said however I have received the following errors when I do run it:

processor processor.c:346-warning: bistreams/2013-10-1 <-> bistreams/%Y-%m-%d/
python module.c:330-warning start module.c (needs to be started? how?)
ihandlers dionaea/ihandlers.py:60-warning: START THE IHANDLERS (uncommented the "//" in the .conf still getting this error)
log signals.c:48-warning: sigint_cb loop0xb7745440 w 0xa015c00 revents 1024

chroot root has to match workingdir, try -r /var/dionaea/ (tried following this, still get the same error message)

I appreciate in advance any advice/guidance

JerZ

Do you try sudo prefix to run it? It require sudo permission.