Cannot run daemon as bitcoin user on OS X 10.11 #7845

I attempt the following in the shell:

$ sudo -u bitcoin -g bitcoin debug=1 /opt/local/bin/bitcoind -conf="/opt/local/etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf" -datadir="/opt/local/var/lib/bitcoind" -pid="/opt/local/var/run/bitcoind/bitcoind.pid"


************************
EXCEPTION: N5boost10filesystem16filesystem_errorE       
boost::filesystem::status: Permission denied: "/Users/alex/Library/Application Support"       
bitcoin in AppInit()       

What is going on here? I am not trying to do anything under /Users/alex/Library/Application Support. On the contrary, I am running bitcoind as a specialised user/group for the system. Could someone please explain? Maybe there is a path I forget to change?

Okay, after some debugging I've tracked this down to the call to TryCreateDirectory in GetDefaultDataDir in src/util.cpp. It's not actually clear why for OS X (and just OS X) a function to return a default path should actually try to create that path – surely that should be done elsewhere and only if necessary to put files within that dir. Anyway, this seems to be the problem... though I can't guarantee it's the only point of failure, it's likely to be the main one.

Do you think we can get this fixed promptly and a new release out, or at least a Git tag? Cheers.

Strange, seems to me you are right. Try a PR removing that line and see what happens. The other part of the mystery is due to whatever behaviour sudo has on your version of OSX - presumably it is leaving $HOME set to "/Users/alex".

Indeed. I've given that a try. Looks to be passing, fingers crossed...

All good. Patch is working great for me here, locally.

Solved by #7850