Could not execute process - Access is denied

[robins]

Problem

This is a re-open for #2306 . Opening a new report as indicated therein.

I can reproduce the error and have pasted the last few lines of the backtrace here... but basically I recently started learning rust and cargo run did work pretty okay till last week and since then I get this persistent access is denied is putting me off. A few things that may help:

• Windows 10 - 19042.1706
• OS not restarted for a few weeks
• Tried crashing / restarting Explorer as indicated in a comment in the above Issue, but that didn't help.
• I see that it could not execute the EXE file, but I can confirm that it doesn't even create the exe file
• I tried this on two different projects and both showed the (exact) same error.

    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.03s
[2022-05-29T13:15:59Z TRACE cargo::util::config] get cv ConfigKey { env: "CARGO_FUTURE_INCOMPAT_REPORT", parts: [("future-incompat-report", 5)] }
[2022-05-29T13:15:59Z TRACE cargo::util::config] get cv ConfigKey { env: "CARGO_ENV", parts: [("env", 5)] }
     Running `target\debug\t.exe`
[2022-05-29T13:15:59Z DEBUG cargo] exit_with_error; err=CliError { error: Some(could not execute process `target\debug\t.exe` (never executed)
    
    Caused by:
        Access is denied. (os error 5)
    
    Stack backtrace:
       0: git_midx_writer_dump
       1: git_midx_writer_dump
       2: git_midx_writer_dump
       3: git_midx_writer_dump
       4: git_filter_source_path
       5: <unknown>
       6: <unknown>
       7: <unknown>
       8: <unknown>
       9: <unknown>
      10: git_midx_writer_dump
      11: <unknown>
      12: git_midx_writer_dump
      13: BaseThreadInitThunk
      14: RtlUserThreadStart), exit_code: 101 }
[2022-05-29T13:15:59Z DEBUG cargo] display_error; err=could not execute process `target\debug\t.exe` (never executed)
    
    Caused by:
        Access is denied. (os error 5)
    
    Stack backtrace:
       0: git_midx_writer_dump
       1: git_midx_writer_dump
       2: git_midx_writer_dump
       3: git_midx_writer_dump
       4: git_filter_source_path
       5: <unknown>
       6: <unknown>
       7: <unknown>
       8: <unknown>
       9: <unknown>
      10: git_midx_writer_dump
      11: <unknown>
      12: git_midx_writer_dump
      13: BaseThreadInitThunk
      14: RtlUserThreadStart
error: could not execute process `target\debug\t.exe` (never executed)

Caused by:
  Access is denied. (os error 5)

Original Error

c:\proj\rust1\t>cat src\main.rs
fn main() {
    println!("Hello, world!");
}

c:\proj\rust1\t>cargo run
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.02s
     Running `target\debug\t.exe`
error: could not execute process `target\debug\t.exe` (never executed)

Caused by:
  Access is denied. (os error 5)

Steps

• Basic Hello World program (see issue Description)
• Cargo run

Possible Solution(s)

No response

Notes

No response

Version

No response

[ehuss]

Do you have any sort of anti-virus installed? That is a usual culprit. You may want to check if the executable has been quarantined if it doesn't even appear to exist.

[John15321]

@robins are you using powershell? That may be the problem. I think you need to configure it to run certain things

[ehuss]

I'm going to close as I do not think this is an issue specific to cargo, and there isn't enough information here to know more about what might be causing your issue. I'm sorry you're having a difficult experience, I know it can be frustrating. I suspect this is related to some background process like Defender or an anti-virus system.

Unfortunately I do not believe Windows provides any more information about "access denied" errors, so I don't think there is much more cargo can display here.

If you continue to have problems and can't diagnose it, I recommend trying one of the user forums (like https://users.rust-lang.org/) for more help.

[glaucomorais]

Do you have any sort of anti-virus installed? That is a usual culprit. You may want to check if the executable has been quarantined if it doesn't even appear to exist.

That was my case. Kaspersky flag build-script-build.exe as a trojan.

[123Brijesh44aa]

I am using linux mint 22, and was facing the same problem but the main issue was with the file system. The file system of my partition was fat32. So I changed it to ext4 and now there is no issue.