CREAM CE Troubleshooting

'workingDirectory' cannot be null

The full error text (ie from SAM) looks like this:

org.glite.ce.common.db.DatabaseException: Rollback executed due to: Column 'workingDirectory' cannot be null

Cause : CREAM uses a per-user "sandbox directory" to hold various files related to the job; this is similar to the shared homes directory of the lcg-CE. One difference is that for CREAM, the directory does not need to exist beforehand; if it does not exist, CREAM will create it. The error above means that when registering the job, CREAM encountered a "null" where the path of the directory should have been.

At Nikhef, those directories are in

/data/sourcream/<unix.groupname>/.... 

Encountering null means that either the directory could not be created (permissions problems), or that the mapped user does not exist (unix groupname does not exist in this case).

One possible cause is, that the ownership and/or permissions of the parent directory are not correct.

Here is an example of correct permissions for submitters with a vanilla atlas proxy (mapped to unix group patlas):

drwxrwx--- 3 tomcat patlas  4096 Feb 16 11:26 patlas

If the failure is not here, take a look in /var/log/messages on the CREAM CE to see if you can find LCMAPS messages about failed mappings, with the same timestamp as the "null workingDirectory" message.