Symptoms
In SQL Server 2019 on Linux, the external satellite process scripts like R, Python are unable to access any directories outside of their working directory.
Resolution
This issue is fixed in the following cumulative update for SQL Server:
About cumulative updates for SQL Server:
Each new cumulative update for SQL Server contains all the hotfixes and all the security fixes that were included with the previous cumulative update. Check out the latest cumulative updates for SQL Server:
More information
You can customize the directories to which the external processes have access to by using mssql-conf tool to set or unset the "datadirectories" setting in the extensibility section of the /var/opt/mssql/mssql.conf configuration file.
The value of the setting is a colon separated directory list which will be exposed to satellite scripts. Microsoft SQL Server Launchpad Daemon needs to be restarted when you set or unset this setting.
The satellite processes run as mssql_satellite special user, so they would inherit the same Read/Write/Execute permissions to the directories specified in this setting as given to this special user.
Example:
#/bin/bash: /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf set extensibility.datadirectories "/opt/mssql/bin:/home/user/rscripts"
SQL Server Extensibility Launchpad Daemon needs to be restarted in order to apply this setting. Please run 'systemctl restart mssql-launchpadd.service'.
Contents of /var/opt/mssql/mssql.conf
[extensibility]
datadirectories = /opt/mssql/bin:/var
#/bin/bash: /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf unset extensibility.datadirectories
SQL Server Extensibility Launchpad Daemon needs to be restarted in order to apply this setting. Please run
'systemctl restart mssql-launchpadd.service'.
Contents of /var/opt/mssql/mssql.conf
[extensibility]
Status
This is by default designed as such so that external processes cannot randomly access any system directories.
References
Learn about the terminology that Microsoft uses to describe software updates.
