Jenkins checkout of GIT project fails with Permission denied fatal: unable to fork

Question

I have a Freestyle Jenkins project that uses bitbucket as SCM with ssh as protocol and private key (not user/password).

When I build the project on master it fails with below stacktrace, while it runs fine on agent.

Notice error mentions:

stderr: fatal: cannot exec '/var/lib/jenkins/workspace/foo_test@tmp/ssh1377177620135545595.sh': Permission denied fatal: unable to fork

I checked the following:

• Running this as jenkins user from command line shows no problem.
• The folder /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/foo_test@tmp is writable by Jenkins
• I am using last version of Git Client 2.7.4

What can be be problem ?

Stacktrace:

    Started by user unknown or anonymous
    Building on master in workspace /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/foo_test
    [WS-CLEANUP] Deleting project workspace...
    [WS-CLEANUP] Deferred wipeout is used...
    Cloning the remote Git repository
    Cloning repository ssh://[email protected]:7999/~xxx/foo_poc.git
    > git init /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/foo_test # timeout=10
    Fetching upstream changes from ssh://[email protected]:7999/~xxx/foo_poc.git
    > git --version # timeout=10
    using GIT_SSH to set credentials
     > git fetch --tags --progress ssh://[email protected]:7999/~xxx/foo_poc.git +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
    ERROR: Error cloning remote repo 'origin'
    hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "git fetch --tags --progress ssh://[email protected]:7999/~xxx/foo_poc.git +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" returned status code 128:
    stdout:
    stderr: fatal: cannot exec '/var/lib/jenkins/workspace/foo_test@tmp/ssh1377177620135545595.sh': Permission denied
    fatal: unable to fork
            at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.launchCommandIn(CliGitAPIImpl.java:2016)
            at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.launchCommandWithCredentials(CliGitAPIImpl.java:1735)
            at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.access$300(CliGitAPIImpl.java:72)
            at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl$1.execute(CliGitAPIImpl.java:420)
            at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl$2.execute(CliGitAPIImpl.java:629)
            at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM.retrieveChanges(GitSCM.java:1146)
            at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM.checkout(GitSCM.java:1186)
            at hudson.scm.SCM.checkout(SCM.java:504)
            at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1208)
            at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.defaultCheckout(AbstractBuild.java:574)
            at jenkins.scm.SCMCheckoutStrategy.checkout(SCMCheckoutStrategy.java:86)
            at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.run(AbstractBuild.java:499)
            at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1819)
            at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:43)
            at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:97)
            at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:429)
    ERROR: Error cloning remote repo 'origin'
    Finished: FAILURE

Answer 1

Check that the workspace directory on the master is not mounted with the 'noexec' option.

• Look at /etc/fstsab to find those settings
• remove noexec
• restart machine

See for more information this great answer by Mark Waiter

• https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/jenkinsci-users/DxJEjp6qsg0/sT53l0CtCAAJ