Problem:

Long before Yuta came along and deleted daqd, I had done something to prevent the framebuilder code from running at all.

Cause:

Alex pointed out via e-mail that the corresponded to the inability to access certain frame files due to their permissions being only for root. 

Turns out when I had run the code under the inittab, I forgot to make it use controls, instead of root (which is the default).  This later on caused problems for the code when it tried to access those files, resulting in the wierd errors we saw.

Solution:

Use chown to change the offending frame files back to controls.

Future:

Write a proper inittab script which uses "su controls" before running the daqd code.