Shell – find: failed to restore initial working directory: Permission denied

cronfindlinuxshell-script

I am trying to find some files on a path /local/java_apps/ and then delete them using a shell script and generate a log file in the /home/jboss
The code is as follows :

STAMP=$(date +"%m%d%Y%H%M%S")
sudo -u jboss find /local/java_apps/ -type f -iname '*.pdf' -mtime +180 -print -delete >> /home/jboss/.log_$STAMP 2>&1

The ls -ld /local/java_apps command gives:

drwxrwxr-x+ 3 root root 4096 Oct 10 2017 /local/java_apps/

The crontab looks like this:

0 1 * * 4 /etc/cron.weekly/servercleanup.sh

When the script is run by the crontab it gives the following error:

find: failed to restore initial working directory: Permission denied

Best Answer

find changes its directory as part of its internal operation. When you run the command, you're sitting in a directory that the jboss user doesn't have permission to go to, so when find tries to put its directory back to what it was, it fails. To fix the problem, run the command from a directory that jboss is allowed to access.

NOT WORKING permissions:

ls -la /usr/bin/crontab
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root crontab 40264 Oct  7  2017 /usr/bin/crontab

Action, do as root or using sudo:

chmod g+s /usr/bin/crontab
chmod u-s /usr/bin/crontab

WORKING permissions:

ls -la /usr/bin/crontab
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root crontab 40264 Oct  7  2017 /usr/bin/crontab

Taken from a fresh working installation, the working permissions are set during installation.

No idea why they changed later on.

Linux – tell find to to not restore initial working directory

Cleanup appears to be a non-optional part of the execution of find.

https://github.com/Distrotech/findutils/blob/e6ff6b550f7bfe41fb3d72d4ff67cfbb398aa8e1/find/find.c#L231

in main in find.c

  cleanup ();
  return state.exit_status;
}

cleanup calls cleanup_initial_cwd

https://github.com/Distrotech/findutils/blob/e6ff6b550f7bfe41fb3d72d4ff67cfbb398aa8e1/find/util.c#L534

and cleanup_initial_cwd actually changes the directory

https://github.com/Distrotech/findutils/blob/e6ff6b550f7bfe41fb3d72d4ff67cfbb398aa8e1/find/util.c#L456

static void
cleanup_initial_cwd (void)
{
  if (0 == restore_cwd (initial_wd))
    {
      free_cwd (initial_wd);
      free (initial_wd);
      initial_wd = NULL;
    }
  else
    {
      /* since we may already be in atexit, die with _exit(). */
      error (0, errno,
         _("failed to restore initial working directory"));
      _exit (EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
}

You could try using a shell script that cds into / first, as you suggested. (there are some issues with this script, it can't handle multiple directories to search, for instance)

#!/bin/sh
path="$(pwd)/$1"
shift
cd /
exec find "$path" "$@"

You can also filter the output of stderr to remove the unwanted message

#!/bin/sh
exec 3>&2
exec 2>&1
exec 1>&3
exec 3>&-
3>&2 2>&1 1>&3 3>&- find "$@" | grep -v "^find: failed to restore initial working directory"
# not sure how to recover find's exit status
exit 0

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Crontab: “Temporary crontab no longer owned by you.”

NOT WORKING permissions:

WORKING permissions:

Linux – tell find to to not restore initial working directory

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