Inappropriate ioctl for device

Question

Hello,
I have some zones set up in solaris 10. When i try to scp a file to any of the zones, i get the following error:
"shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Inappropriate ioctl for device"
1. /export/home is mounted using lofs in to the zone from the parent.
2. This does not happen when i scp something to the parent
3. This does not happen on an account which is local to the zone, whose default shell is bash
3. This does not happen on an NIS account whose default shell is ksh
4. This does happen on all NIS accounts who have a default shell of bash, even if there is nothing in their home directory (ie, no .bashrc).
5. There is no mention of tty in /etc/profile or /etc/.login
6. I have tried changing the default TERM to vt100 from xterm, it still happens
7. The error does not present itself upon a normal ssh login
8. the error [n]does[n] show up when i do something like `ssh myzone "id"` from another box or zone.
If i don't mount /export/home from the parent in to the zone, i do not get this error. There must be some problem with how i set this up maybe? Here's the zonecfg info:
zonepath: /export/zones/vwsuserz
autoboot: true
pool:
inherit-pkg-dir:
dir: /lib
inherit-pkg-dir:
dir: /platform
inherit-pkg-dir:
dir: /sbin
inherit-pkg-dir:
dir: /usr
fs:
dir: /export/home
special: /export/home
raw not specified
type: lofs
options: [rw,nodevices]
net:
address: 10.222.136.162
physical: bge0
I've been googling for a long time and no one seems to have found a resolution. Does anyone have insight in to this problem?
Message was edited by:
keegang
Message was edited by:
keegang

Answer 1

The problem maybe a permissions on your parent directory, I had a similar error:
root@elliot:~ # ls -ald ../
drwx-----x 9 root root 512 Feb 15 14:33 ../
jemurray@freiwald:~ $ scp hat.txt elliot.nts.wustl.edu:
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
hat.txt 100% |**********************************************************************************| 1428 00:00
root@elliot:~ # chmod 755 ../
root@elliot:~ # ls -ald ../
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 512 Feb 15 14:33 ../
jemurray@freiwald:~ $ scp hat.txt elliot.nts.wustl.edu:
hat.txt 100% |**********************************************************************************| 1428 00:00
We used to try and have our main /export/home directory 701 permissions, but we received this error. Permissions 755 make the problem go away. Not the best answer, but for the users we have on our systems, it is not a big deal.