I just marked this as affecting me as well. However, I had to add one other step to reproduce the bug using the instructions above. As the bug title says, the problem only happens when the working directory (not necessarily the one on which find is being run) is unreadable or not executable by the current user. So, I had to add "chmod u-r ./2" before the line "cd 2". The find command then fails with
find: pred.c:1932: launch: Assertion `starting_desc >= 0' failed. Aborted (core dumped) As a real-world example of this bug, this can happen when you are logged-in as root, and in /root and "su" to another user. You are therefore left in /root but without having read/execute permissions to it. find with -exec therefore fails, even if you are searching another directory. This came up while using Puppet, which included a 'find' command. Of course, switching to another directory solved the problem. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to findutils in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1347788 Title: find crashed when current working directory is not readable and -exec or -execdir used Status in “findutils” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: bug is similar to https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?15384 but for current directory (when it not readable or not executable) steps to reproduce DIR=`mktemp -d` cd $DIR mkdir -p 1/1 2 cd 2 find $DIR/1 -type d -exec echo {} \; find $DIR/1 -type d -execdir echo {} \; ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04 Package: findutils 4.4.2-7 Uname: Linux 3.15.4-031504-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2 Architecture: amd64 CurrentDesktop: GNOME Date: Wed Jul 23 20:17:19 2014 Dependencies: gcc-4.9-base 4.9-20140406-0ubuntu1 libc6 2.19-0ubuntu6 libgcc1 1:4.9-20140406-0ubuntu1 multiarch-support 2.19-0ubuntu6 InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-24 (89 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417) SourcePackage: findutils UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) --- ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2 Architecture: amd64 CurrentDesktop: GNOME Dependencies: gcc-4.9-base 4.9-20140406-0ubuntu1 libc6 2.19-0ubuntu6 libgcc1 1:4.9-20140406-0ubuntu1 multiarch-support 2.19-0ubuntu6 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04 InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-24 (89 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417) Package: findutils 4.4.2-7 PackageArchitecture: amd64 Tags: trusty Uname: Linux 3.15.4-031504-generic x86_64 UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo _MarkForUpload: True To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/findutils/+bug/1347788/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp