error: Grunt :: Warning: Clean operation failed.

[Graham Clarke]

Hi - I'm seeing the error below along with some other Grunt errors.  Any thoughts or insights as to what might be causing this are appreciated.

Thanks,
Graham

error: Grunt :: Warning: Clean operation failed. Use --force to continue.
 Running "clean:dev" (clean) task

Cleaning ".tmp/public"...
ERROR

Warning: Clean operation failed. Use --force to continue.


error: Grunt :: 
Aborted due to warnings.
 Running "clean:dev" (clean) task

Cleaning ".tmp/public"...
ERROR

Warning: Clean operation failed. Use --force to continue.


error: *-> An error occurred-- please fix it, then stop and restart Sails to continue watching assets.

[Gabe Hernandez]

The grunt clean task removes the .tmp/public directory. The clean task is the the first task that's run anytime you run 'sails lift' or anytime you make a change to a file in your assets directory. Since It seems to be running that task I think the problem might be that the clean task is not being loaded. 

I get the same error as you do when I comment out this line

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-clean/tasks');

Do you still have this line or do you have it commented out? Make sure you still have this entire block of code in your Gruntfile.

  // Get path to core grunt dependencies from Sails

  var depsPath = grunt.option('gdsrc') || 'node_modules/sails/node_modules';

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-clean/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-copy/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-concat/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-sails-linker/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-jst/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-watch/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-uglify/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-cssmin/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-less/tasks');

  grunt.loadTasks(depsPath + '/grunt-contrib-coffee/tasks');

If you do have that, make sure that in the 'node_modules/sails/node_modules' directory that your see a list of directories that that look like this.

  'grunt-contrib-*sometTaskName*'.

If you don't see these, I would remove and reinstall your local version of sails for this project. Doing that should bring those in?

[Graham Clarke]

Gabe - Thanks for the reply.  This helps me understand a little better what is happening, but no clear solution yet.  My install looks correct based on what your post.

The errors appeared after the app had been running successfully for a couple of hours.  The part of the functionality of the app is to process video clips that get auto loaded into /assets/video/clips/   In Gruntfile.js I launch a process whenever a new clip appears in that directory.  Part of the process makes a thumbnail of the video and puts it into /assets/video/thumbs/

The app works pretty well for a while and then seems to get bogged down and start throwing these Grunt errors.

Let me know if you have questions or have additional insights.

Thanks
Graham

[Jeremy Hazel]

I'm getting the same error, I'd be interested to see if you have found a solution?

[Graham Clarke]

I have not found a real solution yet.  We tested in a "live" setting over the weekend and needed to restart the app periodically.  Was using forever and had to use "forever stop".  That worked, but is not viable longer term.

I need to setup better monitoring to see if this is a memory issue or if there are file collisions in the file system.

Graham

[Jeremy Hazel]

Looks like I was able to fix the issue by using sudo or running as root.

Jeremy

[Graham Clarke]

Cool.  Are you running forever with sudo?

Like this ...
>$ sudo forever start myapp.js

[Jeremy Hazel]

Yes sir...

Make sure you use sudo forever list to see the process as well.

Good luck!

[uncletammy]

I ran into this problem after running 'sudo sails lift'.  I think this created an ownership problem.  To fix it, I ran 'sudo chown <my username> -R * ' from my sails project's root directory and the problem went away.