lstat64 fails on existing directory

Question

After trying for a while to debug a failing move_uploaded_file call, I tried

strace -s 8192 -o strace.log -f /etc/init.d/apache22 restart

This produced, among a lot more output, the following lines:

5069  lstat64("/var", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
5069  lstat64("/var/apache22", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
5069  lstat64("/var/apache22/var", 0xbffe0f8c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

(Yes, I know the path is a bit strange. It's a legacy application.)

The issue is that "/var/apache22/var" really exists. Pasting verbatim (except for [bracketed text]) from a root session:

# ls -la "/var/apache22/var"      
total 24
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root 4096 Mar  7  2011 .
drwxr-xr-x  9 root root 4096 Jan 11 19:18 ..
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 Mar  7  2011 apache22
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Mar  7  2011 log
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan 11 19:36 run
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Mar  7  2011 usr

# stat "/var/apache22/var"
  File: `/var/apache22/var'
  Size: 4096        Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 804h/2052d  Inode: 539214      Links: 6
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2012-01-11 19:46:47.000000000 +0100
Modify: 2011-03-07 23:27:57.000000000 +0100
Change: 2011-06-06 19:39:40.000000000 +0200

# mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda3 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda4 on /var type ext3 (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
/var/[product name] on /var/apache22/var/apache22/export/[product name] type none (rw,bind)

There are no symlinks:

# file / /var /var/apache22 /var/apache22/var
/:                 directory
/var:              directory
/var/apache22:     directory
/var/apache22/var: directory

# uname -r
2.6.29.6

Answer 1

Check if Apache is running inside a chroot(). It's the case I can think of where you see /var/apache22/var and it doesn't actually mean /var/apache22/var.