gpstart failure caused by wrong permission of data directory

Products

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
gpstart fails with following error message:

-[CRITICAL]:-Error occurred: non-zero rc: 1
Command was: 'env GPSESSID=0000000000 GPERA=None $GPHOME/bin/pg_ctl -D /home/gpadmin/gpdata/gpmaster/gpseg-1 -l /home/gpadmin/gpdata/gpmaster/gpseg-1/pg_log/startup.log -w -t 600 -o " -p 5432 -b 1 -z 0 --silent-mode=true -i -M master -C -1 -x 0 -c gp_role=utility " start'
rc=1, stdout='waiting for server to start........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... stopped waiting
', stderr='pg_ctl: could not start server
Examine the log output.

Environment

Cause

Go to the startup log file, /home/gpadmin/gpdata/gpmaster/gpseg-1/pg_log/startup.log. Observe this issue is caused by the data directory having  the wrong permission mode set. 

2018-08-21 06:41:38.583056 GMT,,,p25347,th1652680480,,,,0,,,seg-1,,,,,"FATAL","55000","data directory ""/home/gpadmin/gpdata/gpmaster/gpseg-1"" has group or world access","Permissions should be u=rwx (0700).",,,,,,,"checkDataDir","postmaster.c",1762,

Check the permission of the data directory (in this case, it's master data directory). Observe that the permission of the data director is 755 instead of 700:

drwxr-xr-x. 18 gpadmin gpadmin 4096 Aug 20 23:41 gpseg-1

Resolution

Change the permission of data directory to 700.