shell init issue when click tab, what's wrong with getcwd?

Question

once i click Tab on bash, the error message will appear, what's wrong?

symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Success
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Success
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Success
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Success
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Success
symlink-hook: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Success

sometimes, the error message is:

shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No s uch file or directory

how to solve shell init problem?

Answer 1

This usually occurs when your current directory does not exist anymore. Most likely, from another terminal you remove that directory (from within a script or whatever). To get rid of this, in case your current directory was recreated in the meantime, just cd to another (existing) directory and then cd back; the simplest would be: cd; cd -.

Answer 2

Just change the directory to another one and come back. Probably that one has been deleted or moved.

Answer 3

By chance, is this occurring on a directory using OverlayFS (or some other special file system type)?

I just had this issue where my cross-compiled version of bash would use an internal implementation of getcwd which has issues with OverlayFS. I found information about this here:

It seems that this can be traced to an internal implementation of getcwd() in bash. When cross-compiled, it can't check for getcwd() use of malloc, so it is cautious and sets GETCWD_BROKEN and uses an internal implementation of getcwd(). This internal implementation doesn't seem to work well with OverlayFS.

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.embedded.yocto.general/25204

You can configure and rebuild bash with bash_cv_getcwd_malloc=yes (if you're actually building bash and your C library does malloc a getcwd call).

Answer 4

Yes, cd; and cd - would work. The reason It can see is that, directory is being deleted from any other terminal or any other program and recreate it. So i-node entry is modified so program can not access old i-node entry.