While testing paths, ./configure uses test -r to check for those who are not provided by system headers. However, this does not work for root-only files. On hurd-i386 for instance, /dev/klog is only root readable, so the test fails, and thus inetutils-syslogd doesn't fill /dev/kern.log. ./configure should use test -e instead.
Good to go, do you have push rights, and copyright assignments?
