Failure to restore cache Cannot mkdir: Permission denied

[riffraff]

Description:
This seems like another instance of #362, but it's happening with github-hosted runners, and using yarn instead of npm, and actions/setup-node@v3 instead of v2.

At some point, the cache seems to have been corrupted, and now it fails on multiple PRs.

The java setup action also seems to have a similar issue #459 but I can't guess if it's related.

Action version:
actions/setup-node@v3

Platform:

• Ubuntu
• macOS
• Windows

Runner type:

• Hosted
• Self-hosted

Tools version:
node v12.22.12
yarn v1.22.17

Repro steps:

This is happening in a private repo, whenever the action runs.
It might have started happening after I tried to bump the ancient node version used there in a specific PR, but affecting unrelated ones.

The job is straightforward

  unit_tests:
    name: 'Unit tests'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Setup node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '${{ env.NODE_VERSION }}'
          cache: 'yarn'
      - uses: webfactory/ssh-agent@v0.5.0
        with:
          ssh-private-key: ${{ my-key }}
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: yarn install --ignore-optional --frozen-lockfile --non-interactive
      - run: |
          yarn test:ci

Expected behavior:

Cache is either restored or the job works as if there was a cache miss

Actual behavior:
The job fails. Notice cache size is super tiny, which seems an indication that something else went wrong, but an invalid value is being propagated.

...
Cache Size: ~0 MB (388620 B)
/usr/bin/tar --use-compress-program zstd -d -xf /home/runner/work/_temp/90ebc24d-4768-41bb-8796-16cffd952c1c/cache.tzst -P -C /home/runner/work/my-repo/my-repo
/usr/bin/tar: ../../../../home: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
/usr/bin/tar: ../../../../home/runner/.cache/yarn/v6: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/tar: ../../../../home: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
/usr/bin/tar: ../../../../home/runner/.cache/yarn/v6/npm-tslib-2.4.0-7cecaa7f073ce680a05847aa77be941098f36dc3-integrity: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/tar: ../../../../home: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
....

[IvanZosimov]

Hi, @riffraff 👋 Thanks for this issue! We'll take it under investigation and get back to you with updates.

[IvanZosimov]

Hi, @riffraff 👋 I think you encountered an internal issue with GitHub Actions itself, it means that at some step of caching procedure your cache becomes corrupted. Here I can suggest updating the key for your cache, for that you can make some minor changes in the yarn.lock file. As the cache key is updated the new cache entry will be saved and the action will start to work as expected.

[riffraff]

thanks @IvanZosimov I worked around it that way, and then by disabling the cache for the time being, because it happened a couple times already, and in our current setup it does not grant a major boost (once we migrate to pnp it would be better).

Still, It would be nice if the setup_node action (or the underlying cache action) would treat the failure to restore a cache as a cache miss, maybe you can consider that as a possible enhancement.

[IvanZosimov]

Thank you for your suggestion, @riffraff, we will definitely investigate how to solve this issue! ❤️

[IvanZosimov]

@riffraff, I'm going to close this issue now. If you have any other questions or comments feel free to ping me!

[kopax-polyconseil]

@riffraff, I'm going to close this issue now. If you have any other questions or comments feel free to ping me!

I have a question, why is this closed without explanation please? I am trying to cache ~/.cache/yarn and just hit the same error.