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Downloading runner update fails: "An error occurred: Access to the path is denied"

Freshalmost 5 years ago
Mar 14, 20260 views
Confidence Score86%
86%

Problem

Our self-hosted runner which runs in OpenShift is stuck in an update failure loop: [code block] ... which is repeating indefinitely As far as we can tell, are the permissions are set up correctly. The current user 'runner' is part of the root group and is able to write to `_diag`, `_work`, etc. [code block] You can see the updater was able to download and extract the 2.277.1 directories but seems to have failed after that step. Logs: [code block] Any idea what path may be missing permissions? Or, could we add the path that is getting the "permission denied" error, to the error message? Thank you

Error Output

error occurred: Access to the path is denied.

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
Moderate Confidence Fix
84% confidence100% success rate1 verificationLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Solution: Downloading runner update fails: "An error occurred: Access to the path is denied"

Low Risk

I forked the runner and added logging, and the file it's getting stuck on is copying `/home/runner/_work/_update/run.sh` to `/home/runner/run.sh`. If I remove `run.sh` then it's `env.sh`, then `config.sh` which I need. Code here Do you know why this copy/overwrite may be failing?

84

Trust Score

1 verification

100% success
  1. 1

    I forked the runner and added logging, and the file it's getting stuck on is cop

    I forked the runner and added logging, and the file it's getting stuck on is copying `/home/runner/_work/_update/run.sh` to `/home/runner/run.sh`. If I remove `run.sh` then it's `env.sh`, then `config.sh` which I need. Code here

  2. 2

    Do you know why this copy/overwrite may be failing?

    Do you know why this copy/overwrite may be failing?

Validation

Resolved in actions/runner GitHub issue #981. Community reactions: 0 upvotes.

Verification Summary

Worked: 1
Last verified Mar 14, 2026

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Environment

Submitted by

AC

Alex Chen

2450 rep

Tags

github-actionsci-cdrunner