[distcc] mkdir /root/.distcc failed: Permission denied

[Dan Kegel]

On 3/18/06, Niki Kovacs <contact at kikinovak.net> wrote:
> Since programs like Qt can only be built as root, I run make as root... there,
> I get the following error message:
>
> ERROR: mkdir /root/.distcc failed: Permission denied
>
> I figure this is because distccd runs as user nobody (I explicitly told it to
> do so).

No, .distcc is never created by distccd.  That error message is coming
from the client.  So distccd isn't involved.  Are you quite sure Qt can
only be built as root?  It seems more likely you need to be root to
*install* it.
http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=CVS+Step+Four
is a recipe for building Qt, and I don't think it mentions root...

> Q2: to have a readable log file, I told distccd to output to /var/log/distccd,
> and then chown nobody.nobody /var/log/distccd. What's the orthodox way to
> solve my permission problem above?

Don't chown.  Just do
   chmod 644 /var/log/distccd
on all server machines.  Or use sudo when reading the log file.

- Dan

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Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv