On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 05:29:32PM -0700, Bob Proulx wrote: > However the problem driving me crazy is that this only fails this way > on one machine. Unfortunately failing on the machine I need to use. > If I try this same setup on any other machine I try then there is no > failure and it works okay. Therefore I conclude that in the failing > case it is trying to write a shallow_XXXXXX file in the repository but > in all of the passing cases it does not. I browsed through the > git-daemon source but couldn't deduce the flow yet. > > Does anyone know why one system would try to create shallow_XXXXXX > files in the repository while another one would not? It depends on the git version on the server. The interesting code is in upload-pack.c, which is spawned by git-daemon to serve a fetch or clone request. See commit b790e0f67 (upload-pack: send shallow info over stdin to pack-objects, 2014-03-11), which lays out the history. Since that commit (in git v2.0.0), there should be no tmpfile needed. > Of course git-daemon running as nobody can't create a temporary file > shallow_XXXXXX in the /srv/git/test-project.git because it has no > permissions by design. But why does this work on other systems and > not work on my target system? > > git --version # from today's git clone build > git version 2.11.0.485.g4e59582 This shouldn't be happening with git v2.11. Are you sure that the "git daemon" invocation is running that same version? I notice you set up a restricted PATH. Is it possible that /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin has an older version of git? -Peff