rsync: getcwd(): No such file or directory (2)

Question

I want to sync Server1 and Server2's logs to LogServer.

For Server1:

rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 2188' user@server1:/usr/local/servers/logs/* /usr/local/logs/

This one works, but for Server2:

rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 2188' user@server2:/usr/local/servers/logs/* /usr/local/logs/

It fails:

shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: no such file or directory
job-working-directory: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: no such file or directory
job-working-directory: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: no such file or directory
rsync: getcwd(): No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3) at util.c(992) [sender=3.0.6]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(600) [receiver=3.0.6]

Both Server1 and Server2 is hosted on Amazon with the same version of rsync.

I am quite sure that every directory in the command is exists. How can I solve this problem?

UPDATE: I have tried ssh -p 2188 user@server2 pwd, and it doesn't work:

shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: no such file or directory
job-working-directory: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: no such file or directory

Screenshot

Solution

I had the exact same issue, and my solution was something I had never thought of. In my case rsync worked fine for all the time until it stopped during some tests after changes to one of my scripts. The culprit was that my currently logged in UNIX user was in a non-existent folder that was already deleted by a script.

The getcwd(): No such file or directory (2) error message was related to $PWD, not the source, and not the destination.

Just change the folder to an existing one (e. g. cd ~) and re-run the script. Don’t forget to alter rsync paths if they aren’t already absolute.

Comments

[Sobrique]

What user are you using for rsync? I've seen that error when the current user doesn't have permissions to access the directory structure.

[Jenny D]

Or when the user's home directory doesn't exist on the server.

[wolvpak]

Current user have read permission to those logs and home directory is exist.

[sciurus]

Manually SSH into server2 as user. Does that work without any errors? If so, does ls -R /usr/local/servers work without any errors?

[wolvpak]

Yes, it works without any errors !

[sendmoreinfo]

does 'ssh user@server2 pwd' work too?

[wolvpak]

@sendmoreinfo, this is wired, ssh -p 2188 user@server2 pwd doesn't work! But I can actually login server2 with ssh

[wolvpak]

@MadHatter, I have upload the screenshot, thanks !

[kranteg]

The difference between launching a command with ssh and opening a shell is the init part of the shell. Have you done modifications to .bash_rc or .bash_profile ? Can you compare them between server1 and server2 ?

[Joe C]

This happened to me when I wasn't doing anything remote or over SSH. I changed my source and destination paths to be full paths, not relative to where I was when I issued the command. That fixed ti.

[Nam G VU]

Use scp command instead of rsync may be helpful for you!

[inquam]

I had a very similar issue today when setting up syncing between two folders and getting this message. The source and destination folders clearly existed. I checked if I might have been in a deleted folder but that wasn't the issue. But I was in the destination folder (which was a rclone mounted Google Drive). I changed my working directory to something else and the sync worked perfectly without giving an error.

[progonkpa]

I had the same issue and this solved it, much gratitude.