Permission denied issue when writing to `/tmp/.tensorboard-info`

• TensorBoard version (from pip package, also printed out when running tensorboard) 1.13.1
• TensorFlow version if different from TensorBoard 1.13.1
• OS Platform and version (e.g., Linux Ubuntu 16.04) Ubuntu 16.04
• Python version (e.g. 2.7, 3.5) 2.7

Please describe the bug as clearly as possible, and if possible provide a minimal example (code, data, and/or command line) to reproduce the issue. Thanks!

The writing of tensorboard info files introduced in https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorboard/pull/1806 can cause permission problem under multi-user scenario. It directly create .tensorboard-info directory under /tmp as in https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorboard/blob/5fc3c8cea4b5f79c738345686a218f089b58ddba/tensorboard/manager.py#L237 . If the dir has already been created by an user, it will not be writable to other users.

[noisychannel]

My workaround while this issue is resolved involves setting the TMPDIR environment variable. Since tensorboard uses tempfile which will respect user set environment variables (TMPDIR, TMP, etc.), this is possible. Make sure that the directory which TMPDIR points to exists!

You can change and test the new temp directory by running the following (which sets it to /tmp/$USER instead of /tmp).

export TMPDIR=/tmp/$USER; mkdir -p $TMPDIR; python -c "import tempfile; print(tempfile.gettempdir())"

A safe tensorboard invocation is:

export TMPDIR=/tmp/$USER; mkdir -p $TMPDIR; tensorboard --logdir $LOGDIR

[wchargin]

@reactivetype: Thanks. It looks like your .tensorboard-info directory was created with an older version of TensorBoard, before the fix went in. You’ll need to manually change its permissions just this once:

sudo chmod 777 /tmp/.tensorboard-info