problem starting Bind on redhat server

When I start named on my Redhat server its starts fine and loads named.conf but then I get an error :
'couldn't open pid file '/var/run/named/named.pid': Permission denied'
is there something obvious I should check?

here is the messages log :

1)starting BIND 9.1.3
2)using 1 CPU
3)loading configuration from '/etc/named.conf'
4)the default for the 'auth-nxdomain' option is now 'no'
5)no IPv6 interfaces found
6)listening on IPv4 interface lo, 127.0.0.1#53
7)listening on IPv4 interface eth0, 216.174.XXX.XXX#53
8)command channel listening on 127.0.0.1#953
9)couldn't open pid file '/var/run/named/named.pid': Permission denied
10)exiting (due to early fatal error)

Thank you,
Eric

First off, i don't know the syntax when it comes to BIND 9.

>> 'couldn't open pid file '/var/run/named/named.pid'

What did you put in named.conf? In BIND 8, you can add pid-file "/path/to/named.pid"; within options {};.

Keep in mind, when BIND starts up, it will create the named.pid file automatically, but if your named.pid should be located in a directory that's non-existence, BIND won't mkdir it for you. That said, check and see if there is named directory in /var/run. BTW, the pid file (in non-chroot environment) should be /var/run/named.pid.

9)couldn't open pid file '/var/run/named/named.pid': Permission denied

Have you:
Checked permission setting on your named folder...

I have the same error. The permissions for my /var/run/named directory are

I'm wondering if named is running as some other user than named by default. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's gotten past this issue.

Okay, running the "named -u named" command seems to have gotten me past this issue. I guess it was trying to run as root. Though if it was running as root, I don't see why permission was denied to the directory. But I'm kinda' new to Unix file permissions, so I'm sure it's something I missed.

Dave