Git open calls fail on NFS-mounted NTFS volume

Git open calls fail on NFS-mounted NTFS volume

[Kai Lanz]

There are several places in the code where git calls open() with the  
flag
O_EXCL. This causes a problem for us when the current directory is on an
NFS-mounted NTFS volume shared by an NAS fileserver. The open fails with
"EACCES: Permission denied", even though the user has full read/write
permissions on the target directory.

I used a tiny C program to confirm that the O_EXCL flag is the culprit;
removing that flag from the open() call allows the open to succeed. Of
course, the call also succeeds, with the O_EXCL flag in place, if the
current directory is on an NFS-mounted UNIX filesystem.

We're looking into ways to work around this; one way would be to hack  
the git
source and remove all the O_EXCL flags (are they really needed?), but  
I'm
afraid that might break git in horrible ways. Another way might be to  
mount
the NTFS volume via CIFS instead of NFS. But first I wanted to ask if  
anyone
here can offer a solution based on changing our git configuration or  
our NFS
mount options or the NTFS volume settings. (At present we have no  
gitconfig
file, so all settings are default).

Git version is 1.6.5.3, running on x86_64 RHEL-4, kernel 2.6.9-89.  
The error
the user sees is:

 > cd /WWW
 > git init
fatal: cannot copy '/usr/local/share/git-core/templates/info/exclude' to
'/WWW/.git/info/exclude': Permission denied

Using strace, we can see the offending call:

open("/WWW/.git/info/exclude", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_EXCL, 0666) = -1  
EACCES
(Permission denied)

We know the user has permission to create this file because he can cd  
into
/WWW/.git/info and copy exclude there from the templates directory by  
hand.

-- 
Kai Lanz            Stanford University School of Earth Sciences

Re: Git open calls fail on NFS-mounted NTFS volume

[Junio C Hamano]

Kai Lanz <lanz@stanford.edu> writes:

> There are several places in the code where git calls open() with the
> flag
> O_EXCL. This causes a problem for us when the current directory is on an
> NFS-mounted NTFS volume shared by an NAS fileserver.
> ...
> Git version is 1.6.5.3, running on x86_64 RHEL-4, kernel 2.6.9-89.

I do not use nor have access to RHEL, but does this ring a bell?

    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524520