Self Service Summary
When troubleshooting the Dynatrace Synthetic ActiveGate installation we encountered the below error messages in the logs.
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Desktop
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Downloads
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Templates
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Public
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Documents
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Music
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Pictures
2023-12-22T10:23:37,604Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: Can't create dir /snap/chromium/x1/Videos
2023-12-22T10:23:37,630Z DEBUG [visitId=5][browser-gobbler-3] ChromeGobblerLogger: mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/snap/chromium/x1/.config’: Permission denied
These messages keep occurring even though the Synthetic ActiveGate works fine.
Root cause
These messages appear because of the missing home directory for the Synthetic user (dtuserag).
For security reasons, the installer does not create home directory when adding the user.
It is instead set to the root directory, where it doesn't have the permissions.
Solution
Unfortunately, these messages are going to be displayed. Because of snap confinements, there are some warnings reported by Chromium, but they do not impact the monitor's executions.
However, it is possible to install the ActiveGate and set a specific, existing user as the worker user. This user could have the home directory present.
/bin/bash Dynatrace-ActiveGate-Linux-x86-${VERSION}.sh --enable-synthetic USER=${CUSTOM_USER}
It is advisable to use the default user to have that extra level of security.
