Root user .ignition directory and Designer start issues

Ignition
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1

I've had an issue where somehow I had root create the .ignition subdirectory in my ignition user directory. This happened after deleting the .ignition directory to clear up disk space (I read https://support.inductiveautomation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047596071-How-to-Clear-Client-ignition-Cache-and-Java-Cache ... Ok I didn't get advised to do it :grin:) and then updating my localhost installation to 8.1.36 (from 8.1.30).

Note I run a Hyper-V based Ubuntu MATE which runs both a localhost test instance of Ignition 8.1 (currently 8.1.36) and the Designer to connect to all 3 of my test (localhost), dev and prod Ignition servers.

The main issue appeared when trying to run Designer (either 1.1.30 or 1.1.36 ) when I received either:

  1. Launch Error Occurred, Downloading of launchclient.jar failed, Launching will not occur
  2. Downloading of launchclient.jar failed, Launching will not occur

It took a while but I finally figured out, luckily enough when I went to look at the directory, that for some reason the .ignition directory in my ignition user's directory (predictably enough, the user is called ignition) had been recreated by root:

drwxr-xr-x  2 ignition ignition  12288 Feb  2 20:41 Downloads/
drwx------  3 root     root       4096 Feb  2 20:16 .ignition/
drwxr-xr-x  3 ignition ignition   4096 Mar 24  2023 .java/

And of course it wouldn't let me view it (as the ignition user), which I found rather annoying.

I decided the quickest fix was a quick sudo rm -rf .igniton followed by a mkdir .ignition :

drwxr-xr-x  2 ignition ignition  12288 Feb  2 20:41 Downloads/
drwxrwxr-x  2 ignition ignition   4096 Feb  2 20:59 .ignition/
drwxr-xr-x  3 ignition ignition   4096 Mar 24  2023 .java/

After which the Designer start issue ceased to exist. I expect the root-owned,permission-limited .ignition directory could have created no end of other issues, but I didn't get that far :grin:

I hope this helps someone.

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2

Surely chown -R would've been quicker :wink:

But, good find, and kudos for posting for the next person who runs into it.

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Well, yes I thought of chown afterwards. I'm from a user background rather than administrator and this alters your view of what you can do and how to do it. But frankly when it's late on a Friday night, you're worried Designer won't work, still at work long after you shouldn't be, tired, annoyed, frustrated, wondering what the f**k you're still doing there and not quite thinking optimally anymore, when you hit a solution- any solution- you stick with it even if it's not the 'elegant solution.'

And I bet you've all been there sometime, somewhere, with some issue too! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

If you wish, please post the correctest, most elegantest solution. :slight_smile:

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