Question

Does anyone know why maven on Centos 5.x can’t find user settings unless I use ‘-s’?

• Home is set to /home/build
• $HOME/.m2/settings.xml exists, owned by user, can be read by user
• I’m using a fresh download of mvn 3.0.4 (fails with 3.0.3 too)

I suspect something in my environment is getting in the way, but I’m not sure what.

Can’t find user Settings — not using “-s”

[build@...]$ echo $HOME; mvn clean -X|grep setting 

/home/build
[DEBUG] Reading global settings from .../apache-maven-3.0.4/conf/settings.xml
[DEBUG] Reading user settings from ?/.m2/settings.xml
[DEBUG]   Imported: org.apache.maven.settings < plexus.core

Finds user Settings — “-s” used

[build@...]$ echo $HOME; mvn clean -X -s $HOME/.m2/settings.xml|grep setting 

/home/build
[DEBUG] Reading global settings from .../apache-maven-3.0.4/conf/settings.xml
[DEBUG] Reading user settings from /home/build/.m2/settings.xml
[DEBUG]   Imported: org.apache.maven.settings < plexus.core

Thanks

Peter

Answer 1

“su” command lies at the core of this particular issue. “su” can execute commands as another user. When used without the “-“ it doesn’t process startup scripts for that use which can lead to hybrid environments in some cases.

When writing an init.d startup script be sure to use “su -” when invoking commands or your build system user will execute using root user’s environment variables (HOME included)

Problem on Some OS because BAMBOO_USER operates with root user’s environment

    su $BAMBOO_USER -c "cd ${BAMBOO_HOME}; nohup java -Dbamboo.home=${BAMBOO_HOME} ... &"

More proper init.d script

    su - $BAMBOO_USER -c "cd ${BAMBOO_HOME}; nohup java -Dbamboo.home=${BAMBOO_HOME} ... &"