What causes "No such file or directory" in apache/hadoop?

Log and inspect the exact path string passed in — Windows path construction (prefixes, separators, empty segments) is the usual culprit.

apache/hadoop · error · NativeIOException

ENOENT

ENOENT

Error message

No such file or directory

What it means

On Windows, NativeIO.chmod maps the native failure: Win32 error 3 (ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND) is re-thrown as NativeIOException("No such file or directory", Errno.ENOENT). It means chmod(2) failed because the target path does not exist at the moment of the call — a plain missing-file error surfaced through the native wrapper.

Source

Thrown at hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/nativeio/NativeIO.java:398

     */
    public static native FileDescriptor open(String path, int flags, int mode) throws IOException;
    /** Wrapper around fstat(2) */
    private static native Stat fstat(FileDescriptor fd) throws IOException;
    /** Wrapper around stat(2). */
    private static native Stat stat(String path) throws IOException;

    /** Native chmod implementation. On UNIX, it is a wrapper around chmod(2) */
    private static native void chmodImpl(String path, int mode) throws IOException;

    public static void chmod(String path, int mode) throws IOException {
      if (!Shell.WINDOWS) {
        chmodImpl(path, mode);
      } else {
        try {
          chmodImpl(path, mode);
        } catch (NativeIOException nioe) {
          if (nioe.getErrorCode() == 3) {
            throw new NativeIOException("No such file or directory",
                Errno.ENOENT);
          } else {
            LOG.warn(String.format("NativeIO.chmod error (%d): %s",
                nioe.getErrorCode(), nioe.getMessage()));
            throw new NativeIOException("Unknown error", Errno.UNKNOWN);
          }
        }
      }
    }

    /** Wrapper around posix_fadvise(2) */
    static native void posix_fadvise(
      FileDescriptor fd, long offset, long len, int flags) throws NativeIOException;

    /** Wrapper around sync_file_range(2) */
    static native void sync_file_range(
      FileDescriptor fd, long offset, long nbytes, int flags) throws NativeIOException;

View on GitHub (pinned to 2add963021)

Solutions

Log and inspect the exact path string passed in — Windows path construction (prefixes, separators, empty segments) is the usual culprit.
Check Files.exists(Paths.get(path)) immediately before the call; if it races with a deleter, treat ENOENT as benign ('already gone').
If the file should exist, fix the lifecycle: whoever deletes/moves it must not race the permission change.

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

Path p = Paths.get(path);
if (!Files.exists(p)) {
  // create the file first, or skip the chmod as nothing to do
}

Try / catch

try {
  NativeIO.chmod(path, mode);
} catch (NativeIOException e) {
  if (e.getErrno() == Errno.ENOENT) {
    // target already gone: benign if deleters race us, otherwise surface
  } else { throw e; }
}

Prevention

Log absolute paths on failure — Windows path construction is the usual root cause.
Avoid exists-then-chmod patterns without handling the deletion race.
Prefer java.nio.file permission APIs where portability matters.

When it happens

Trigger: NativeIO.chmod(path, mode) on Windows where path is absent, misspelled, built with wrong separators/roots, or where the file was deleted between an exists() check and the chmod (TOCTOU race with a cleaner/concurrent task).

Common situations: Path construction bugs on Windows (drive letters, mixed separators, empty segments from null components); output-cleanup code racing a chmod; files already moved by another process.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of apache/hadoop@2add963021 (2026-08-22). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3e88f0c61468a89f. Report an issue: GitHub.