touch: cannot touch file: No such file or directory

Question

I am getting the error:

touch: cannot touch `/opt/tsrm/compliance/cme/log/20121207.log`: No such file or directory

on the touch command: touch $LOGFILE

I also checked the link: touch: cannot touch `foo': No such file or directory, But I didn't understand the answer.

Note: I was also getting mkdir: cannot create directory; I fixed this by adding the -p option.

Could this be something with the version of Linux I am working in?

Solution 1

You do not have the path that holds the file:

/opt/tsrm/compliance/cme/log/

That's where the error come from.

Solution 2

Sounds like you misspelled the path. For example, this folder /stuff/more_stuff does not exist. This gives me the result:

user@linux:~ $ touch /stuff/more_stuff/stuff.file
touch: cannot touch `/stuff/more_stuff/stuff.file': No such file or directory

Both /stuff and /stuff/more_stuff need to exist in order for touch to work.

Solution 3

As silly as this reply sounds, other than missing directory, there could be string delimiter surrounding the value in $LOGFILE

Working:

LOGFILE=/stuff/more_stuff/stuff.file
touch $LOGFILE

Not Working:

LOGFILE="/stuff/more_stuff/stuff.file"
touch $LOGFILE

Some Linux distro have the quirk above, so be careful ;)

Solution 4

Yes there might be chances of miss typo or directory not exists .

LOGFILE="/opt/tsrm/compliance/cme/log/20121207.log"
LOG_DIR=`dirname $LOGFILE`
[ ! -d $LOG_DIR ] && mkdir -p $LOG_DIR
touch $LOGFILE

View more solutions

Comments

[S edwards]

explanation pretty simple, if the folder your were in was destroy when you invoke touch then it fails.

[Jason Swett]

Ah yes, the "MC Hammer error"

[Basile Starynkevitch]

I would call that a directory not a path

[Aaron Franke]

In my case I am trying to use touch /etc/resolv.conf and it says touch: cannot touch '/etc/resolv.conf': No such file or directory. /etc definitely does exist.

[Admin]

mkdir -p /opt/tsrm/compliance/cme/log