ERROR says : Failed to create folder root directory mkdir /var/lib/syncthingsyncthingTEST: permission denied

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1

I have been playing with syncthing but much to my disapointment it wont play with me. an error reports that “Failed to create folder root directory mkdir /var/lib/syncthingsyncthingTEST: permission denied”

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having looked for help on syncthing’s forum I find that other such errors are blamed on the OS.

Please could someone tell me how one sets the correct permissions to resolve this.

Thanks

2

ssh onto your FreedomBox and try the following commands:

sudo mkdir /var/lib/syncthing
sudo chmod 755 /var/lib/syncthing
sudo chown syncthing:syncthing /var/lib/syncthing
3

Excellent solution jdhedden. THANKS.

I needed to use the /var/lib/syncthingsyncthingTEST dir because that was the folder that was missing but otherwise exactly what you said was exactly what I needed.

Thanks

4

The directory should’ve been /var/lib/syncthing/syncthingTEST (notice the additional /). It’s not really a permissions issue. Syncthing should be able to create directories under /var/lib/syncthing, but it doesn’t have the permissions to create directories under /var/lib.

5

This is my first FreedomBox setup so I’m doing all the exploring and trying to work out what it’s for.

I’m an average user and now you point it out I do see the / but I’ve only been working through the Freedombox gui so I don’t know how I broke except for changing the default folder and whatever else I did :stuck_out_tongue: so I bet I’m not the last to make this mistake.

My plan in the future is to point syncthing at an external drive and from this situation I suspect that at that point it will become a permission thing. Is that right?

Thanks for the help.

6

Syncthing doesn’t have external drive support yet. For now, you can only create directories under /var/lib/syncthing.

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