Bug "Moving file failed" when opening or creating a new project in Unity 5

Hello,

I'm elevating a problem I posted about a few days ago. Specifically, when I try to open a project or create a new one in Unity 5, a dialog pops up entitled "Moving file failed" with the following message:

"Moving /home/j/Documents/New Unity Project/Temp/UnityTempFile-9be1df4a3619e4705a696ea4101e8ff4 to
/home/j/Documents/New Unity Project/library/metadata/00/00000000000000001000000000000000: "

I'm given the option to Force Quit, and then it gives me another dialog notifying me that I force quit on the above error. The editor log didn't reveal anything particularly useful, but here's the last few lines:

Native extension for Android target not found
Downloading http://update.unity3d.com/5.3/ivy.xml to /tmp/unity/89f3d06b-458b-41da-9c2b-5d54cf8057d6/ivy.xml
Validating Project structure ... 0.000096 seconds.
Shader import version has changed; will reimport all shaders...
Upgrading shader files ...0.000022 seconds.
Refresh: detecting if any assets need to be imported or removed ... Refresh: elapses 0.074571 seconds
Updating Assets - GUID: 00000000000000001000000000000000...
Task failed: Verifier Task
Force Quit pressed for Moving file failed: Moving /home/j/Documents/New Unity Project/Temp/UnityTempFile-9be1df4a3619e4705a696ea4101e8ff4 to /home/j/Documents/New Unity Project/library/metadata/00/00000000000000001000000000000000:

(Filename: ./Runtime/Utilities/RetriableOperation.h Line: 103)

process_set_termination_details: error looking up process handle 0x401​

The temporary file source exists, as does the destination folder, so I can only assume the issue is with the colon being appended to the end of the filename. I was able to run Unity successfully one time. Since then, it's always generated this error. I've also set it up on another system that's very similar, with no issues.

My system:

OS: Linux Mint 17.3
CPU: Intel i7
Video: GTX 570Ti

I've tried reinstalling it using the debian installer and the sh script. Both worked fine, but neither seemed to solve this problem. I've completely deleted Unity and reinstalled it twice. That means I deleted /opt/Unity and the unity3d folders in my ~/.config and ~/.local paths, as well as any projects that I've created. I can't find any other residual files, so I'm fairly sure they were clean installs.

Anyway, I don't assume it's a bona fide bug, necessarily, but I've really no idea where to go looking on my end, if it isn't.

 

I have determined the cause of the error. Somehow, the read permission on my /home folder was revoked. After adding it back ("sudo chmod 755 /home" to ensure permissions were "dwrx-rx-rx"), Unity started correctly.

I should state that I would still consider this a bug if only because the error message made no sense and made it look as though Unity was trying to do something strange.

Thus, this cryptic error should be reproducible if read permissions are revoked on the /home folder specifically (but not it's subfolders).

 

Wow that's weird... the things incorrect Linux permissions do to client apps.