Yocto: postinstall intercept hook "update_desktop_database" error

Question

I am trying to build custom linux image using yocto. The set up is;

• Ubuntu 20.04 on Oracle Virtual Machine

• Yocto release dunfell

It gives this error

NOTE: Exit code 127. Output: /home/user234/yocto-project/image/build/tmp/work/qemux86-poky-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/intercept_scripts-1bf6a9721f164ba99b8a07325a9c3fe0f21a700fea55c8351519b59cf02d0aca/update_desktop_database: 7: update-desktop-database: not found

ERROR: The postinstall intercept hook 'update_desktop_database' failed, details in /home/user234/yocto-project/image/build/tmp/work/qemux86-poky-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/temp/log.do_rootfs

The problem only occures in Virtual Machine Environment, It works fine with native linux environment on my other machine.

I have installed the desktop-file-utils and I can run from my shell manually. Somehow, bitbake is unable to detect it. Does someone know the solution?

Answer 1

I had a similar problem (without virtual machine, you will see that this part is unrelated). The issue is with file permissions of the Yocto sources, or part of them. In my particular case the DevOps have set the POSIX file permissions on the entire Yocto source directory to 777, i.e. -rwxrwxrwx. Don't ask me why.

In the OP's case it seems like the Yocto sources may have been copied to the virtual machine with a help of some permission-less file system, like FAT32, which results in the same outcome. A good example is copying the sources with a USB flash drive formatted with FAT32. YMMV, this may probably be relevant for ACLs as well, I haven't tried to fiddle with that.

In my opinion, this should be considered as a bug in bitbake. If the source files permissions can cause such an unpredictable behavior, they have to be verified before or during the build, and the user must be informed by generating an error.

This is clearly irrelevant to the OP by now, hope somebody finds it useful.