yaha - Of course... since the dprof file is written by the child, not the master, the effective user is not root and thus has no write access to the apaceh root.

Solution is to add the following to the httpd command line:

-d `pwd` Of course a non-dev situation would require something other than pwd, but you really shouldn't be profiling a production system ;)

Thankyou - mods up everyone.