Tomcat does not create temporary directory used to store file uploads when it does not exist

[shehzadgee]

Steps to Reproduce
When spring boot application starts with default value of server.tomcat.basedir in application.properties. It creates two folders in /tmp folder. /tmp/tomcat.xxxxx/.. and /tmp-docbase.xxxx/

These directories are used to save temp files during multipart upload among other needed functions. In production system such as Centos, by default system is configured to delete all /tmp files if not touched for 10 days. Once this file is deleted logs will show this error and upload will fail with following exception

org.springframework.web.multipart.MultipartException: Could not parse multipart servlet request; nested exception is java.io.IOException: The temporary upload location [**/tmp/tomcat.1220970741172837513.8080/work/Tomcat/localhost/ROOT]** is not valid
	at org.springframework.web.multipart.support.StandardMultipartHttpServletRequest.parseRequest(StandardMultipartHttpServletRequest.java:111)

Possible Solution:
May be lets check if required temp directory doesn't exist recreate during multipart upload. And upload will work without any additional settings.
Other fixes/suggestions are welcome as well.

Affected Versions
Logs are from Spring Boot v1.4.3.RELEASE but its still same in 1.5.3.RELEASE

Workarounds

• On Centos 7 update tmp.conf in following three directories /etc/tmpfiles.d/, /run/tmpfiles.d/ and /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/. with following line
  x /tmp/tomcat*

OR handle programmatically

• Catch exception in GlobalException Handler and recreate directory and inform user to try upload again.

full_log.txt

[philwebb]

There's quite a bit of discussion on this in #5009. The documentation for 1.5.0 was also updated with our suggested solution.

[kappmeier]

@shehzadgee I know this and the other tickets have been closed, however without a working solution. Can you please elaborate a bit how I would implement your suggested solution of catching the exception and recreating the directory?

Generally, I do not think that something simple as storing a file in a temporary directory during upload should require manual action by the developer or server admin of any kind, so if you reconsider fixing the issue would be great. As for the discussion in #5009 I also think /tmp is the correct directory.

[timja]

@philwebb this doesn't seem to be a duplicate can it be reopened?
the other issues are about using another location and the danger of using /tmp

This one is about recreating the files if it can be detected that they have been deleted.

[shehzadgee]

Hi Kappmeier,

I didn't get chance to look into spring boot code to find where this multipart exception is throw. But I handled it my GlobalExceptionHandler in following way. So when I detect that an upload failed because directory is deleted by system cleanup process. I just recreate it and ask user to try upload file again.

So in my humble opinion same check can be placed inside Spring Boot so if directory doesn't exist, it should try to recreate. If it failed due to access rights only than upload should fail.

public  ResponseEntity<?> handle(org.springframework.web.multipart.MultipartException exception) {
		Log.error("handle->MultipartException" + exception.getMessage(),exception);
		// general exception
		if (exception.getCause() instanceof IOException && exception.getCause().getMessage().startsWith("The temporary upload location"))
		{
			String pathToRecreate = exception.getMessage().substring(exception.getMessage().indexOf("[")+1,exception.getMessage().indexOf("]"));
			Set<PosixFilePermission> perms = new HashSet<>();
		    // add permission as rw-r--r-- 644
		    perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_WRITE);
		    perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_READ);
		    perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_EXECUTE);	    
		    perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_READ);
		    perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_WRITE);
		    perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_EXECUTE);
		    FileAttribute<Set<PosixFilePermission>> fileAttributes = PosixFilePermissions.asFileAttribute(perms);
			try {			
				Files.createDirectories(FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(pathToRecreate), fileAttributes);
			} catch (IOException e) {
				LOG.error(e.getMessage(),e);
				return ResponseUtils.sendError("Unable to recreate deleted temp directories. Please check  "+ pathToRecreate);
			}	
			return ResponseUtils.sendError("Recovered from temporary error by recreating temporary directory. Please try to upload logo again.");		
		}
		return ResponseUtils.sendError("Unable to process this request.");
	}

[philwebb]

I'm still not too sure how we can fix this, but I'm happy to try again in the 2.0.x line. One option might be to periodically update a file in those directories so that they don't get deleted (see this comment). Another idea would be to write a special MultipartResolver that tests if the directly exists before attempting to use it.