hashicorp/nomad · error

failed to determine absolute path for %s

Error message

failed to determine absolute path for %s

What it means

In StorageFingerprint.diskInfo, filepath.Abs fails to compute an absolute path for the host volume path being fingerprinted (e.g. malformed path input), so disk capacity/volume detection for the storage fingerprint cannot proceed and the error propagates to Fingerprint.

Source

Thrown at client/fingerprint/storage_unix.go:22

//go:build darwin || dragonfly || freebsd || linux || netbsd || openbsd || solaris

package fingerprint

import (
	"fmt"
	"os/exec"
	"path/filepath"
	"runtime"
	"strconv"
	"strings"
)

// diskInfo inspects the filesystem for path and returns the volume name and
// the total bytes available on the file system.
func (f *StorageFingerprint) diskInfo(path string) (volume string, total uint64, err error) {
	absPath, err := filepath.Abs(path)
	if err != nil {
		return "", 0, fmt.Errorf("failed to determine absolute path for %s", path)
	}

	// Use -k to standardize the output values between darwin and linux
	var dfArgs string
	if runtime.GOOS == "linux" {
		// df on linux needs the -P option to prevent linebreaks on long filesystem paths
		dfArgs = "-kP"
	} else {
		dfArgs = "-k"
	}

	mountOutput, err := exec.Command("df", dfArgs, absPath).Output()
	if err != nil {
		return "", 0, fmt.Errorf("failed to determine mount point for %s", absPath)
	}
	// Output looks something like:
	//	Filesystem 1024-blocks      Used Available Capacity   iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
	//	/dev/disk1   487385240 423722532  63406708    87% 105994631 15851677   87%   /

View on GitHub (pinned to 482b49bf1a)

Solutions

1. Pass an absolute path as the storage/alloc directory.
2. Recreate the deleted working directory or restart the client from a valid directory.
3. Check permissions on the process's current directory.

Example fix

// before
alloc_dir = "data/alloc"  // relative, CWD deleted
// after
alloc_dir = "/opt/nomad/data/alloc"  // absolute

if !filepath.IsAbs(path) {
	abs, err := filepath.Abs(path)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("cannot resolve %s to absolute path: %w", path, err)
	}
	path = abs
}

if err := fp.Fingerprint(req); err != nil {
	if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to determine absolute path") {
		log.Printf("path resolution failed: %v", err)
		return nil
	}
	return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: diskInfo called with a relative path while the process has no resolvable working directory (os.Getwd fails inside filepath.Abs), e.g. after the CWD was deleted.

Common situations: Client started in a deleted directory with a relative alloc_dir configured; restricted environments where Getwd returns ENOENT.

Related errors

• unable to get CWD from filesystem: %s
• failed to determine disk space for %s: %v
• failed to determine mount point for %s
• failed to parse `df` output; expected at least 2 lines
• failed to parse `df` output; expected at least 4 columns

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/nomad@482b49bf1a (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/436a599f0ee639e3. Report an issue: GitHub.