Permission denied

April 30, 2026 · View on GitHub

Playbook ID: permission-denied Category: runtime Severity: high Tags: permissions, file, chmod, sudo

What this failure means

The process tried to read, write, execute, or connect to a resource it does not have permission to access.

Common log signals

permission denied
operation not permitted
EACCES
EPERM
access denied
insufficient permissions
cannot create directory
ERROR 1045

Diagnosis

The process tried to read, write, execute, or connect to a resource it does not have permission to access.

Fix steps

  1. Run ls -la on the target file or directory to inspect the current permissions.
  2. Add chmod +x for scripts that need to be executable.
  3. Do not rely on sudo in CI; redesign the step to work without elevated privileges.
  4. For file system paths, ensure the CI user owns or has the correct group access.

Validation

  • Re-run the failing workflow step.
  • Confirm the original failure signature for Permission denied is gone.

Likely files to inspect

  • Dockerfile
  • .github/workflows/*.yml
  • .github/workflows/*.yaml
  • scripts/*

Run Faultline

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain permission-denied
faultline workflow build.log --json --mode agent

Search phrases this page answers

  • Permission denied
  • Runtime: permission denied
  • dial unix /var/run/docker.sock
  • faultline explain permission-denied

Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/runtime/permission-denied.yaml. Do not edit directly — run make docs-generate.