In my previous message, I forgot to also note that if modifying (if required) wpa_supplicant to create the socket with the ownership & permissions set in the rc.conf file is too hard (would create issues with importing new versions easily) then the same can be accomplished by putting the socket in a sub-dir (it is already I believe) and applying the permissions to the gating directory, then the socket just needs to be made 666 mode and we're all happy.
And incidentally, why is (even before the recent changes, I haven't updated to those in systems I use yet) the socket created 770 mode ? What does 'x' mean to a socket? Does that have some magic meaning I'm unaware of, or is this just sloppy? kre