dconf-CRITICAL **: unable to create directory '/home/bigbluebutton/.cache/dconf'

[KingMatrix1989]

Hi. I have installed bbb using your script. and these is output of bbb-conf --status:

nginx —————————————————► [✔ - active]
freeswitch ————————————► [✔ - active]
redis-server ——————————► [✔ - active]
bbb-apps-akka —————————► [✔ - active]
bbb-transcode-akka ————► [✔ - active]
bbb-fsesl-akka ————————► [✔ - active]
red5 ——————————————————► [✔ - active]
tomcat7 ———————————————► [✔ - active]
mongod ————————————————► [✔ - active]
bbb-html5 —————————————► [✔ - active]
bbb-webrtc-sfu ————————► [✔ - active]
kurento-media-server ——► [✔ - active]
etherpad ——————————————► [✔ - active]
bbb-web ———————————————► [✔ - active]

and this is output of sudo bbb-conf --debug:

-- ERRORS found in /var/log/bigbluebutton/* --
/var/log/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.log:2020-08-25T07:54:48.079Z ERROR o.j.local.office.VerboseProcess -
/var/log/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.log:2020-08-25T07:54:48.080Z ERROR o.j.local.office.VerboseProcess - (process:25791): dconf-CRITICAL **: unable to create directory '/home/bigbluebutton/.cache/dconf': Permission denied.  dconf will not work properly.

...
...

what is the problem?

[rezahmady]

I have the same problem

[Peituga]

I have the same problem too, need to fix since recordings are not being processed.

[ffdixon]

Which version have you installed?

[Peituga]

Hi @ffdixon I have 2.2.23 version, installed with the sh script.

The first try was unsuccesful, because i had errors while processing recordings and with freeswitch. After that I managed to reinstall and now I only ha e the dconf errors.

Thanks

[hamzaali4943]

I have the same problem too

[ChrisKar96]

After installation, the directory /home/bigbluebutton/ was not created for me. I solved this issue by running mkhomedir_helper bigbluebutton. This creates the home folder of the bigbluebutton user that is missing. After that, systemctl restart bbb-web and the problem should be solved.

[mk-hs]

I'm getting the same error on a newly installed server.
/home/bigbluebutton/ isn't present on any other server I've configured before, so it seems something else is amiss.
I had installed 2.2.24 and it's still present on 2.2.25.

[ffdixon]

I think you can ignore those errors -- they don't stop the processing of recordings.

[praka07]

i have face same problem and i am not able to land on home page

[diwinters]

Same here! done all the workaround, but it persists.

[raza-hasnain]

my presentation is not uploading, when I click on upload it shows me converting file processing bar, till hours and stuck there, is there any option to fix it or remove this uploading feature from the options, please help me out. thanks

[nicolasbonnet]

mkhomedir_helper bigbluebutton

Where do you find this script please ?
Otherwise, can you give us require folders and chmod associated ?

Thanks for your help ;)

[ffdixon]

my presentation is not uploading

Can you try updating to the latest release (2.2.29) and let us know if the problem still persists.

[goekce]

I updated from 2.2.28 to 29 and had the same issue, but I am not sure if this problem existed in 28.
#265 (comment) helped.

[hoangtk0100]

After executing mkhomedir_helper bigbluebutton
The error is still there. Because the file in the directory'/home/bigbluebutton/.cache/dconf' does not exist.
So you have to assign permission to access the parent directory
chmod 777 /home/bigbluebutton

[BoukariOUEDRAOGO]

Hello,
I have the same problem.
BBB-conf --check is ok
Webcam sharing is ok
Presentation sharing is ok
Only audio sharing is not ok but shows error message : " Connexion timed out (1006)"
Can some one help please?

Boukari

[nicolasbonnet]

Hi, to resolve my problem i have to reinstall the server ....

[michi-80337]

I had the same problem after installing 2.2.36 via bbb-install.sh

The user "bigbluebutton" will be created by the install script, but its home directory /home/bigbluebutton will not. The script /usr/share/bbb-web/run-prod.sh will then try to create further directories beneath the home, and fail, because the home directory does not exist yet, and the user "bigbluebutton" is not allowed to create it in /home.

My quick and dirty solution was to create the directories /home/bigbluebutton, /home/bigbluebutton/.cache and /home/bigbluebutton/.cache/dconf by hand as root:

mkdir /home/bigbluebutton /home/bigbluebutton/.cache /home/bigbluebutton/.cache/dconf
chown -R bigbluebutton:bigbluebutton /home/bigbluebutton
chmod -R o-rwx,g=u,g-w /home/bigbluebutton

The commands might differ slightly on your system, but you get the idea. In my view, giving mode 777 to directories should be avoided for security reasons.

CU, Michi

[bbbondemand]

I had same problem, fairly new install 2.236 with bbb-install.sh - meetings closed afer about 7 minutes apparently due to this problem. Recreating the folders as shown by @michi-80337 worked for me.

[ffdixon]

meetings closed afer about 7 minutes apparently due to this problem.

This error shouldn't be related to meetings closing. Do you see anything in the /var/log/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.log related to the meeting closing. Did you get a specific message when the meeting closed?

[bbbondemand]

Really sorry Fred - you are right it was not the cause of my problem.

The script from @michi-80337 stopped the dconf- errors but were unrelated to my meeting shutting down (which is only happening via an intergration created meeting - not mconf so I will dig deeper on that and raise seperate ticket or question on the group if I get stuck!)

[hex-m]

User creation happens in bbb-record-core.preinst

addGroup bigbluebutton ""
addUser bigbluebutton "" bigbluebutton /home/bigbluebutton "bigbluebutton" "/bin/false"

The documentation mentions it should be something like adduser --system --group bigbluebutton. That should add the user, group and home directory and set the shell to /bin/false.

I have that problem on my BBB-Servers. The only "specialty" I can think of is that I ran bbb-install.sh as root, not using sudo.

I also checked my bbb 2.3.1 system and there /home/bigbluebutton is missing too.

[michi-80337]

There are multiple packages that create the user if it doesn't exist yet. I found it in bbb-apps-akka.postinst, bbb-fsesl-akka.postinst, bbb-record-core.preinst, and in bbb-transcode-akka.postinst. Which one is actually used, depends on the installation order of these packages.

addUser() is a shell function defined in the install scripts, and the function delegates the actual work to the useradd system tool:

[...]
if [ -z "$uid" ]; then
    uid_flags=""
else
    uid_flags="--uid $uid"
fi
[...]
if ! getent passwd | grep -q "^$user:";
then
    echo "Creating system user: $user in $group with $descr and shell $shell"
    useradd $uid_flags --gid $group -r --shell $shell -c "$descr" $user
fi
[...]

The -r switch is equivalent to the --system switch. The man page for useradd states:

[...]
-r, --system
    Create a system account.

    System users will be created with no aging information in
    /etc/shadow, and their numeric identifiers are chosen in the
    SYS_UID_MIN-SYS_UID_MAX range, defined in /etc/login.defs, instead
    of UID_MIN-UID_MAX (and their GID counterparts for the creation of
    groups).

    Note that useradd will not create a home directory for such an
    user, regardless of the default setting in /etc/login.defs
    (CREATE_HOME). You have to specify the -m options if you want a
    home directory for a system account to be created.
[...]

The manpage further tells that -m and --create-home are equivalent. Now let's have a deeper look into bbb-record-core.preinst, because the userAdd function looks a little bit different there:

[...]
    if [ -z "$uid" ]; then
        uid_flags=""
    else
        uid_flags="--uid $uid"
    fi
    if [ -z "$4" ]; then
        home_flags="--no-create-home"
    else
        home_flags="-d $4"
    fi
[...]
    if ! getent passwd | grep -q "^$user:";
    then
        # echo "Creating system user: $user in $group with $descr and shell $shell"
        useradd $uid_flags --gid $group $home_flags --system --shell $shell -c "$descr" $user
    fi
[...]

There is no -m switch to create the directory. Hence no directory is created.

The -d switch used in the function just controls the home directory field in /etc/passwd:

[...]
-d, --home-dir HOME_DIR
    The new user will be created using HOME_DIR as the value for the
    user's login directory. The default is to append the LOGIN name to
    BASE_DIR and use that as the login directory name. The directory
    HOME_DIR does not have to exist but will not be created if it is
    missing.
[...]

[schrd]

is this issue still relevant? Libreoffice is running in a container since BBB 2.3. Please test with the latest 2.4 release.