Hi, i was debugging this on and off for the last 36 hours and found the error message quite misleading. [root@ganymede:/etc/bird]# cat bird2.conf router id 172.23.42.3; protocol device { scan time 10; }; [root@ganymede:/etc/bird]# bird -c bird2.conf -p bird: bird2.conf:1:1 Symbol already defined [root@ganymede:/etc/bird]# bird --version BIRD version 2.0.7 But the error is not due to birds config file, it is due to a duplicate entry in /etc/iproute2/rt_tables definitions. [root@ganymede:/etc/bird]# ltrace bird -c bird2.conf -p [...] strcmp("ipt_igpt", "ipt_igpt") = 0 strlen("Symbol already defined") = 22 [...] Took me quite some time to find this and I would appreciate if the error message could be improved. Best regards, Martin