PANIC","42501","could not fsync file ""base/12345/18699349"": Operation not permitted"

Products

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum
• Greenplum
• VMware Tanzu Data Suite
• VMware Tanzu Data Suite

Issue/Introduction

A segment panics when it is doing a CHECKPOINT with a strack trace like:

2025-04-08 21:37:47.451396 +03,,,p26798,th-1822559488,,,,0,,,seg5,,,,,"PANIC","42501","could not fsync file ""base/12345/32172250"": Operation not permitted",,,,,,,0,,"sync.c",452,"Stack trace:
1    0xceffac postgres errstart (elog.c:494)
2    0xb65b59 postgres ProcessSyncRequests (sync.c:449)
3    0xb2a06f postgres CheckPointBuffers (bufmgr.c:2735)
4    0x7a81db postgres CreateCheckPoint (xlog.c:9955)
5    0xabc204 postgres CheckpointerMain (checkpointer.c:498)
6    0x7f4627 postgres AuxiliaryProcessMain (bootstrap.c:470)
7    0xac9de9 postgres <symbol not found> (postmaster.c:6001)
8    0xacb155 postgres <symbol not found> (postmaster.c:3463)
9    0x7f44931bb990 libpthread.so.0 <symbol not found> + 0x931bb990
10   0x7f448fef41bb libc.so.6 __select + 0x1b
11   0xacc375 postgres <symbol not found> (postmaster.c:1963)
12   0xace2a7 postgres PostmasterMain (postmaster.c:1636)
13   0x6ee304 postgres main (main.c:173)
14   0x7f448fdf97e5 libc.so.6 __libc_start_main + 0xe5
15   0x6fa17e postgres _start + 0x2e
"

The segment recovers without failing over to the mirror.

Cause

When fsync fails with "Operation not permitted", it is usually due to a 3rd party software application that is monitoring or running antivirus on the filesystem.

The monitoring/antivirus application may temporarily change the ownership of a file and stop the Greenplum user (gpadmin) from fsync'ing the file to disk.

Resolution

Stop all antivirus software and monitoring software on the hosts in the cluster.