lighttpd won't start even with the right permissions

systemctl status lighttpd ● lighttpd.service - Lightning Fast Webserver With Light System Requirements Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/lighttpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2020-09-24 15:56:39 EDT; 2s ago Process: 6152 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/lighttpd -D -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (code=exited, status=255) Main PID: 6152 (code=exited, status=255) Sep 24 15:56:39 js.dc.localsystemd: Started Lightning Fast Webserver With Light System Requirements. Sep 24 15:56:39 js.dc.locallighttpd: 2020-09-24 15:56:39: (server.c.752) opening errorlog '/var/log/lighttpd/error.log' failed: Permission denied Sep 24 15:56:39 js.dc.locallighttpd: 2020-09-24 15:56:39: (server.c.1485) Opening errorlog failed. Going down. Sep 24 15:56:39 js.dc.localsystemd: lighttpd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/n/a Sep 24 15:56:39 js.dc.localsystemd: lighttpd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. dir permissions are as follows: ]# ls -la /var/log/lighttpd/ total 4 drw-rw-rw- 2 lighttpd lighttpd 41 Sep 24 15:54 . drwxr-xr-x. 8 root root 4096 Sep 24 14:49 .. -rw-rw-rw- 1 lighttpd lighttpd 0 Sep 24 15:00 access.log -rw-rw-rw- 1 lighttpd lighttpd 0 Sep 24 15:54 error.log I've remove and recreated the file. There is no selinux enabled. Not sure what else to try.