Thanks for the "strace" hint... it looks like the problem has nothing to do with master.info ... I still can't figure out what is happening though. I set the permissions really broad on the affected files, although I don't think it was necessary. Here is some more info from my system. I really appreciate the help!

Error from START SLAVE command ============================= ERROR 1201: Could not initialize master info structure, check permisions on master.info

Here is an error from my dev.pmehost.com.err ======================================== 031211 20:23:22 Failed to open the relay log './plain-relay-bin.001' (relay_log_pos 230799709) 031211 20:23:22 Could not find target log during relay log initialization

Result from strace ====================================================== 13067 close(10) = 0 13067 getcwd("/var/lib/mysql", 4095) = 15 13067 lstat64("/var/lib/mysql/master.info", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0777, st_size=74, ...}) = 0 13067 access("/var/lib/mysql/master.info", F_OK) = 0 13067 open("/var/lib/mysql/master.info", O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) = 9 13067 _llseek(9, 0, [74], SEEK_END) = 0 13067 _llseek(9, 0, [0], SEEK_SET) = 0 13067 read(9, "server-bin.001\n230799702\nwww.pri"..., 74) = 74 13067 getcwd("/var/lib/mysql", 4095) = 15 13067 lstat64("/var/lib/mysql/relay-log.info", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0660, st_size=57, ...}) = 0 13067 open("./", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE|O_DIRECTORY) = 10 13067 fstat64(10, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0 13067 fcntl64(10, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 13067 getdents64(10, /* 52 entries */, 4096) = 1984 13067 getdents64(10, /* 0 entries */, 4096) = 0 13067 close(10) = 0 13067 open("./dev-relay-bin.022", O_RDWR|O_APPEND|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0660) = 10 13067 _llseek(10, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR) = 0 13067 _llseek(10, 0, [0], SEEK_END) = 0 13067 _llseek(10, 0, [0], SEEK_END) = 0 13067 open("./dev-relay-bin.index", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0660) = 11 13067 _llseek(11, 0, [420], SEEK_END) = 0 13067 write(10, "\376bin", 4) = 4 13067 _llseek(11, 420, [420], SEEK_SET) = 0 13067 write(11, "./dev-relay-bin.022\n", 20) = 20 13067 access("/var/lib/mysql/relay-log.info", F_OK) = 0 13067 open("/var/lib/mysql/relay-log.info", O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) = 12 13067 _llseek(12, 0, [57], SEEK_END) = 0 13067 _llseek(12, 0, [0], SEEK_SET) = 0 13067 read(12, "./plain-relay-bin.001\n230799709\n"..., 57) = 57 13067 _llseek(11, 0, [0], SEEK_SET) = 0 13067 read(11, "./dev-relay-bin.001\n./dev-relay-"..., 440) = 440 13067 time(NULL) = 1071190376 13067 write(2, "031211 18:52:56 ", 17) = 17 13067 write(2, "Failed to open the relay log \'./"..., 78) = 78 13067 write(2, "\n", 1) = 1 13067 time(NULL) = 1071190376 13067 write(2, "031211 18:52:56 ", 17) = 17 13067 write(2, "Could not find target log during"..., 57) = 57 13067 write(2, "\n", 1) = 1 13067 close(12) = 0 13067 close(10) = 0 13067 close(11) = 0 13067 close(9) = 0 13067 time(NULL) = 1071190376 13067 write(2, "031211 18:52:56 ", 17) = 17 13067 write(2, "Failed to initialize the master "..., 46) = 46 13067 write(2, "\n", 1) = 1 13067 fstat64(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0 13067 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x41576000 13067 write(1, "/usr/sbin/mysqld: ready for conn"..., 41) = 41 13067 write(1, "Version: \'4.0.15-standard\' sock"..., 76) = 76 13067 sched_getscheduler(0x330b) = 0 13067 sched_getparam(0x330b, 0xbfffeb68) = 0 13067 fcntl64(3, F_GETFL) = 0x2 (flags O_RDWR) 13067 fcntl64(4, F_GETFL) = 0x2 (flags O_RDWR)

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drwxr-xr-x 12 mysql root 4096 Dec 11 20:23 ./ drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Oct 16 05:06 ../ -rw------- 1 mysql mysql 154 Dec 10 20:35 .bash_history -rw-rw---- 1 mysql root 11636 Dec 11 20:23 dev.pmehost.com.err -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 5 Dec 11 18:58 dev.pmehost.com.pid -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 7 16:05 dev-relay-bin.001 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 01:51 dev-relay-bin.002 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 02:01 dev-relay-bin.003 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 02:12 dev-relay-bin.004 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 02:25 dev-relay-bin.005 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 02:33 dev-relay-bin.006 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 20:23 dev-relay-bin.007 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 20:44 dev-relay-bin.008 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 20:47 dev-relay-bin.009 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 10 20:50 dev-relay-bin.010 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 02:23 dev-relay-bin.011 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 02:44 dev-relay-bin.012 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 03:56 dev-relay-bin.013 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 04:06 dev-relay-bin.014 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 04:39 dev-relay-bin.015 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:29 dev-relay-bin.016 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:33 dev-relay-bin.017 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:36 dev-relay-bin.018 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:38 dev-relay-bin.019 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:40 dev-relay-bin.020 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:50 dev-relay-bin.021 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:52 dev-relay-bin.022 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:53 dev-relay-bin.023 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:54 dev-relay-bin.024 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 18:58 dev-relay-bin.025 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 19:42 dev-relay-bin.026 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4 Dec 11 20:23 dev-relay-bin.027 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 540 Dec 11 20:23 dev-relay-bin.index drwx------ 2 mysql mysql 4096 Oct 16 05:02 eximstats/ drwx------ 2 mysql mysql 4096 Oct 16 05:04 horde/ -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 25088 Oct 16 04:34 ib_arch_log_0000000000 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 10485760 Dec 11 18:58 ibdata1 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 5242880 Dec 11 18:58 ib_logfile0 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 5242880 Oct 16 04:34 ib_logfile1 drwxrwx--- 2 mysql mail 4096 Oct 16 05:06 mail/ -rwxrwxrwx 1 mysql mysql 74 Dec 7 16:01 master.info* drwx--x--x 2 mysql root 4096 Oct 17 02:05 mysql/ -rw------- 1 mysql mysql 97 Dec 10 20:35 .mysql_history srwxrwxrwx 1 mysql mysql 0 Dec 11 18:58 mysql.sock= -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 79 Oct 28 19:07 plain-bin.001 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 16 Oct 28 19:07 plain-bin.index -rwxrwxrwx 1 mysql mysql 230799709 Dec 7 16:01 plain-relay-bin.001* -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 22 Nov 26 06:02 plain-relay-bin.index drwx------ 2 mysql mysql 4096 Nov 6 23:32 printsma_prints/ -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 57 Dec 7 16:01 relay-log.info