rtorrent fails to poll a directory if every directory along the poll path is not readable by owner of the rtorrent process

[Antti Laiti]

I use these in my rtorrent.rc:

schedule = watch_directory_1,10,10,"load_start=/home/foo/bar/*.torrent,d.set_custom1=/home/rtorrent_user/ready"
system.method.set_key =event.download.finished,move_complete,"d.set_directory=$d.get_custom1= ;execute=mv,-u,$d.get_base_path=,$d.get_custom1="

If the owner of the rtorrent process has execute but no read access to directory /home/foo, rtorrent fails to poll the .torrent files in directory /home/foo/bar even though it would have all rights to that directory and its contents.

Just to clarify the situation:

$ ls -ld /home
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Oct 17 08:55 /home
$ ls -ld /home/foo
drwx--x--x 7 root root 4096 Sep 7 18:37 /home/foo
$ ls -ld /home/foo/bar
drwxr-xr-x 6 rtorrent_user rtorrent_user 4096 Oct 24 17:16 /home/foo/bar
$ ls -l /home/foo/bar/test.torrent
-rw-r--r-- 1 rtorrent_user rtorrent_user 0 Nov 12 21:23 /home/foo/bar/test.torrent

Looking at the strace of rtorrent, it seems to try to read /home, then /home/foo and then it stops since it has no read access there.

Simple workaround that works:
ln -s /home/foo/bar /home/rtorrent_user/bar

and then change the rtorrent.rc to poll that directory.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.