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Pablo
Asked: 2014-06-05 02:15:17 +0800 CST

Why would chmod give "No such file or directory" when running recursively?

  • 772

I can change the permissions of the file directly:

# chmod --changes --recursive ug+rwX       /var/www/shared/tmp/cache/assets/BA0/280/sprockets%2F286302903364106648b609d708884f78

and I can also change the permissions of the directory that contains the file:

# chmod --changes --recursive ug+rwX       /var/www/shared/tmp/cache/assets/BA0/280

when I try to change the permission of the directory that contains that directory, recursively, I get an error about the previous directory not being found:

# chmod --changes --recursive ug+rwX       /var/www/shared/tmp/cache/assets/BA0
chmod: getting new attributes of `280': No such file or directory

The current permissions, even though I don't how this can be of any influence, look like this:

# ls -alR /var/www/shared/tmp/cache/assets/BA0
/var/www/shared/tmp/cache/assets/BA0:
total 20
drwxrwsr-x   3 rails rails  4096 Jun  4 09:54 .
drwxrwsr-x 569 rails rails 12288 Jun  4 09:54 ..
drwxrwsr-x   2 rails rails  4096 Jun  4 09:54 280

/var/www/shared/tmp/cache/assets/BA0/280:
total 12
drwxrwsr-x 2 rails rails 4096 Jun  4 09:54 .
drwxrwsr-x 3 rails rails 4096 Jun  4 09:54 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 rails rails  481 Jun  4 09:54 sprockets%2F286302903364106648b609d708884f78

I'm running the commands as root. Any ides?

linux

2 Answers

  1. I just had this happen to me this week when using --verbose. Was initially puzzled but think I have narrowed it down. This only happens when the SETGID bit is set.

    Test setup:

    $ mkdir --parent foo/bar

    Without SetGID, no error:

    $ chmod --recursive --changes o-rwx foo
mode of ‘foo’ changed from 0775 (rwxrwxr-x) to 0770 (rwxrwx---)
mode of ‘foo/bar’ changed from 0775 (rwxrwxr-x) to 0770 (rwxrwx---)

    With SETGID, error:

    $ chmod --recursive g+s foo
$ chmod --recursive --changes o-rwx foo
mode of ‘foo’ changed from 2775 (rwxrwsr-x) to 2770 (rwxrws---)
chmod: getting new attributes of ‘bar’: No such file or directory

    As a workaround, use find:

    $ find foo | xargs chmod --changes o-rwx
mode of ‘foo’ changed from 0775 (rwxrwxr-x) to 0770 (rwxrwx---)
mode of ‘foo/bar’ changed from 0775 (rwxrwxr-x) to 0770 (rwxrwx---)

    Hope this helps!

    • 5
  2. Best Answer

    This bug looks related:

    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=706097

    I can reproduce it in debian 7 with coreutils 8.13-3.5.

    I think that not using "--changes" or "--verbose" can workaround the problem.

    • 3