Pkg directory shared among users has several permission problems

[diegozea]

In my computer, using a package gives me this SystemError (denied permission).
I need to run sudo julia in order to use packages... Is there a way to solve this? Can *.ji be created with less restrictions?

julia> using Compat
ERROR: SystemError: opening file /home/dzea/.julia/lib/v0.4/Compat.ji: Permiso denegado
 in open at ./iostream.jl:90
 in open at iostream.jl:102
 in stale_cachefile at loading.jl:383
 in recompile_stale at loading.jl:418
 in _require_from_serialized at loading.jl:83
 in _require_from_serialized at ./loading.jl:109
 in require at ./loading.jl:186

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 0.4.0-dev+7044
Commit 706cad1 (2015-08-27 21:32 UTC)
Platform Info:
  System: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  BLAS: libopenblas (NO_LAPACK NO_LAPACKE DYNAMIC_ARCH NO_AFFINITY Sandybridge)
  LAPACK: liblapack.so.3
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-3.3

[nalimilan]

Maybe you installed the package while running julia under sudo? Can you post the output of ls -l /home/dzea/.julia/lib/v0.4/Compat.ji?

[diegozea]

I can't remember if I installed the package with sudo. The output is:

-rw------- 1 root root 30383 ago 29 00:51 /home/dzea/.julia/lib/v0.4/Compat.ji

All my *.jis have the same mode: -rw------- 1 root root

[yuyichao]

They cannot possibly have root as their owner if it is not created or changed ownership by root. This is a very typical issue with running command under sudo while maintaining the value of HOME.

[jakebolewski]

That looks to be your problem.

[nalimilan]

I case you don't know how to fix it, chown -R dzea: /home/dzea/.julia should do the trick. Let us know if it ever comes back.

[timholy]

I'm reopening this to point out that using a system-wide shared Pkg folder has several issues:

• Even if /usr/local/julia/packages is created with g+w permissions, any new folders get created with default permissions. If user1 adds CoolPackage.jl, user2 can't fix bugs in it even though they are in the same group.
• The *.ji files get written with permissions like these:

user2@diva:/tmp/packages/lib/v0.4$ ls -l
total 484
-rw------- 1 user2 dummy 376701 Aug 30 11:27 ColorTypes.ji
-rw------- 1 user2 dummy  30165 Aug 30 11:27 Compat.ji
-rw------- 1 user2 dummy  82414 Aug 30 11:27 FixedPointNumbers.ji

What that means is that if one user has used a package, it prevents any other user from accessing it. As user1:

julia> using ColorTypes
ERROR: SystemError: opening file /tmp/packages/lib/v0.4/ColorTypes.ji: Permission denied
 in open at ./iostream.jl:90
 in open at iostream.jl:102
 in stale_cachefile at loading.jl:379
 in recompile_stale at loading.jl:414
 in _require_from_serialized at loading.jl:83
 in _require_from_serialized at ./loading.jl:105
 in require at ./loading.jl:182

julia> 

In this case user1 can read the source files, but because the *.ji file is present julia tries (and fails) to load it.

[timholy]

For the benefit of others, here's an easy way to do this kind of testing:

addgroup dummy
adduser --ingroup dummy user1
adduser --ingroup dummy user2

and then start julia with JULIA_PKGDIR=/tmp/packages /path/to/julia.

[nalimilan]

It would probably make sense to respect the permissions of the parent directory (.julia or a subfolder thereof) when installing packages.

[timholy]

That's my sense too.

[stevengj]

The .ji permissions are the result of #12699, because mkstemp+rename uses mode 0600. I guess it could run chmod afterwards.

[adowling2]

We have setup a shared Julia package folder on a shared computer, and have observed a few (possibly related) issues:

• When a package is recompiled, the .ji permissions are set such that other users of the machine cannot access them. We have a script the fixes this via chown and chgrp and runs every 5 minutes via cron as a work around.
• After one user recompiles a package, any other users with get "Recompiling stale cache file" message. Were constantly recompiling packages on a busy multiuser machine.
• The git repos for the packages inevitably become dirty, and each require a "stash" command before Pkg.update() will do anything.