Relevant telegraf.conf:

[[inputs.filestat]]
  files = ["/does/not/exist"]

System info:

Telegraf 1.14.0-1 from the bionic repo https://repos.influxdata.com/ubuntu/.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Ensure the file /does/not/exist does not exist
2. Setup an input config with the configuration snippet above & restart telegraf

Expected behavior:

If the file doesn't exist: No log message.

If the file does exist but can't be probed (e.g. on an unreadable directory): A log message giving the actual error.

Actual behavior:

1. In system logs: telegraf logs that it can't probe the file, but guesses incorrectly that the permissions are wrong: [inputs.filestat] Unable to get info for file "/does/not/exist", possible permissions issue
2. The filestat measurement about the file is correctly reported with exists: 0.

Additional info:

A PR exists for this issue, at #6940: it attempts to fix this with an additional configuration flag. I think that is unnecessary & will submit another PR with a less config-heavy fix.