[pgpool-general: 2916] pgpool-II V3.3.3 will not start with use_watchdog = on

[John Scalia]

Greetings all,

I'm fairly new to pgpool-II, and I'm still trying to learn about all it's options, but my three test servers, configured as a primary with 2 standby servers in a master-slave 
arrangement, have developed a problem. Pgpool-II starts and runs just fine on the primary database server, but it will not start on either standby if I have use_watchdog = on. The 
log reports:

LOG:     pid 23024: wd_check_setuid all commands have setuid bit
LOG:     pid 23024: watchdog might call network commands which using setuid bit.
ERROR: pid 23024: wd_init: failed to start watchdog
ERROR: pid 23024: watchdog: wd_init_failed
ERROR: pid 23024: wd_main error
ERROR: pid 23024: unlink(/tmp/.s.PGSQL.9898) failed: No such file or directory

I'm fairly sure the last line from the log is just a cleanup attempt which fails as the socket never got created, but otherwise, I'm not sure why this is actually failing. On rare 
occasion pgpool-II will sort of start, but none of the child processes get spawned, and a ps -ef | grep pgpool yields only the:

  /usr/bin/pgpool -f /etc/pgpool-II/pgpool.conf -n

line. Now, if I can't get this resolved, what exactly am I losing by not running watchdog? Of course, I'd really like to have this working in its entirety.

Thanks in advance,
Jay