Max Bowsher created CASSANDRA-13211:
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Summary: cassandra shell script uses bad approach to write "Unable
to find java" error to stderr, causing real issue to be masked by a permission
error if user has changed user since logging in
Key: CASSANDRA-13211
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-13211
Project: Cassandra
Issue Type: Bug
Reporter: Max Bowsher
The cassandra startup shell script contains this line:
echo Unable to find java executable. Check JAVA_HOME and PATH environment
variables. > /dev/stderr
The problem here is the construct "> /dev/stderr". If the user invoking
Cassandra has changed user (for example, by SSHing in as a personal user, and
then sudo-ing to an application user responsible for executing the Cassandra
daemon), then the attempt to open /dev/stderr will fail, because it will point
to a PTY node under /dev/pts/ owned by the original user.
Ultimately this leads to the real problem being masked by the confusing error
message "bash: /dev/stderr: Permission denied".
The correct technique is to replace "> /dev/stderr" with ">&2" which will write
to the already open stderr file descriptor, instead of resolving the chain of
symlinks starting at /dev/stderr, and attempting to reopen the target by name.
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