symfony2 failed to write cache directory

Question

I have had to use the   app console cache clear  command   to solve a problem when generating an entity   I am now unable to load my homepage on      http   localhost projet etienne web app dev php   it says       RuntimeException  Failed to write cache file   var www projet etienne app cache dev classes php     I don t understand much about this cache business   In my app cache folder  I got a dev  a dev new  a dev old folder  Is that normal   the  app console cache clear   generates by the way a        ErrorException    Warning  rename  var www projet etienne app cache dev  var www projet etien         ne app cache dev old   Directory not empty in  var www projet etienne vendo        r symfony symfony src Symfony Bundle FrameworkBundle Command CacheClearComm        and php line 77      please help

User · Answer

Most likely it means that the directory and/or sub-directories are not writable. Many forget about sub-directories.

Symfony 2

chmod -R 777 app/cache app/logs

Symfony 3 directory structure

chmod -R 777 var/cache var/logs

Additional Resources

Permissions solution by Symfony (mentioned previously).

Permissions solution by KPN University - additionally includes an screen-cast on installation.

Note: If you're using Symfony 3 directory structure, substitute app/cache and app/logs with var/cache and var/logs.

User · Answer

You probably aborted a clearcache halfway and now you already have an app cache dev old   Try this  in the root of your project  assuming you re on a Unixy environment like OS X or Linux    rm -rf app cache dev

User · Answer

Just use this acl cmd  next time the files inside var are created it will have the r w x permission for www-data user    cd var  rm -rf   cd    setfacl -d -m u www-data rwx var   Cmd explanation   setfacl - gt  Set acl command     -d - gt  default behavior     -m - gt  modify  u www-data  - gt  for user  rwx - gt  adding permissions   var - gt  on the folder

User · Answer

Maybe you forgot to change the permissions of app cache app log  I m using Ubuntu so  sudo chmod -R 777 app cache sudo chmod -R 777 app logs sudo setfacl -dR -m u  rwX app cache app logs   Hope it helps

User · Answer

i executed   ps aux   grep apache   and got something like that   root     28147  0 0  5 4 326336 27024          Ss   20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start www-data 28150  0 0  1 3 326368  6852          S    20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start www-data 28151  0 0  4 4 329016 22124          S    20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start www-data 28152  0 1  6 0 331252 30092          S    20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start www-data 28153  0 0  1 3 326368  6852          S    20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start www-data 28154  0 0  1 3 326368  6852          S    20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start www-data 28157  0 0  1 3 326368  6852          S    20 06   0 00  usr sbin apache2 -k start user     28297  0 0  0 1  15736   924 pts 4    S    20 12   0 00 grep --color auto apache   so my user with no access turned out to be www-data thus i executed commands   sudo chown -R www-data app cache sudo chown -R www-data app logs   and it solved access errors      Never-ever use unsecure 777 for solving specific access probles    sudo chmod -R 777 app cache sudo chmod -R 777 app logs

User · Answer

For a GOOD and definite solution see the Setting up Permissions section in  Installing and Configuring Symfony section        Setting up Permissions      One common issue when installing Symfony is that the app cache and   app logs directories must be writable both by the web server and the   command line user  On a UNIX system  if your web server user is   different from your command line user  you can try one of the   following solutions          Use the same user for the CLI and the web server         In development environments  it is a common practice to use the same   UNIX user for the CLI and the web server because it avoids any of   these permissions issues when setting up new projects  This can be   done by editing your web server configuration  e g  commonly   httpd conf or apache2 conf for Apache  and setting its user to be the   same as your CLI user  e g  for Apache  update the User and Group   values           Using ACL on a system that supports chmod  a         Many systems allow you to use the chmod  a command  Try this first    and if you get an error - try the next method  This uses a command to   try to determine your web server user and set it as HTTPDUSER     rm -rf app cache     rm -rf app logs      HTTPDUSER  ps aux   grep -E   a pache  h ttpd    www  w ww-data  n ginx    grep -v root   head -1   cut -d   -f1    sudo chmod  a   HTTPDUSER allow delete write append file inherit directory inherit  app cache app logs   sudo chmod  a   whoami  allow delete write append file inherit directory inherit  app cache app logs          Using ACL on a system that does not support chmod  a         Some systems don t support chmod  a  but do support another utility   called setfacl  You may need to enable ACL support on your partition   and install setfacl before using it  as is the case with Ubuntu   This   uses a command to try to determine your web server user and set it as   HTTPDUSER     HTTPDUSER  ps aux   grep -E   a pache  h ttpd    www  w ww-data  n ginx    grep -v root   head -1   cut -d   -f1    sudo setfacl -R -m u   HTTPDUSER  rwX -m u  whoami  rwX app cache app logs   sudo setfacl -dR -m u   HTTPDUSER  rwX -m u  whoami  rwX app cache app logs       For Symfony 3 it would be     HTTPDUSER  ps aux   grep -E   a pache  h ttpd    www  w ww-data  n ginx    grep -v root   head -1   cut -d   -f1    sudo setfacl -R -m u   HTTPDUSER  rwX -m u  whoami  rwX var cache var logs   sudo setfacl -dR -m u   HTTPDUSER  rwX -m u  whoami  rwX var cache var logs       If this   doesn t work  try adding -n option          Without using ACL         If none of the previous methods work for you  change the umask so that   the cache and log directories will be group-writable or world-writable    depending if the web server user and the command line user are in the   same group or not   To achieve this  put the following line at the   beginning of the app console  web app php and web app dev php files   umask 0002      This will let the permissions be 0775     or  umask 0000      This will let the permissions be 0777       Note that using  the ACL is recommended when you have access to them on your server   because changing the umask is not thread-safe    http   symfony com doc current book installation html checking-symfony-application-configuration-and-setup  source    Failed to write cache file  quot  var www myapp app cache dev classes php quot  when clearing the cache

User · Answer

If you face this error when you start Symfony project with docker  my Symfony version 5 1   Or errors like these   Uncaught Exception  Failed to write file  quot  var www html mysite com local var cache dev App KernelDevDebugContainer xml quot  quot  while reading upstream   Uncaught Warning  file put contents  var www html mysite com local var cache dev App KernelDevDebugContainerDeprecations log   failed to open stream  Permission denied quot  while reading upstream  Fix below helped me  In Dockerfile for nginx container add line  RUN usermod -u 1000 www-data  In Dockerfile for php-fpm container add line  RUN usermod -u 1000 www-data  Then remove everything in directories  quot  var cache quot    quot  var log quot  and rebuild docker s containers

User · Answer

if symfony version less than 2 8   x000D   x000D  sudo chmod -R 777 app cache   x000D   x000D   x000D    if symfony version great than or equal 3 0   x000D   x000D  sudo chmod -R 777 var cache   x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

If the folder is already writable so thats not the problem   You can also just navigate to  www projet etienne app cache  and manualy remove the folders in there  dev  dev new  dev old    Make sure to SAVE a copy of those folder somewhere to put back if this doesn t fix the problem  I know this is not the way it should be done but it worked for me a couple of times now

User · Answer

I move the whole directory from my Windows installation to a unix production server and I got the same error  To fix it  I just ran these two lines in unix and everything started to run fine  rm -rf app cache   rm -rf app logs

[symfony] symfony2 : failed to write cache directory

Additional Resources

Examples related to symfony