Cant open a pod shell

Lens Support & Troubleshooting
#1

After working for a while,
all of the sudden i find that i cannot open a pod shell.
Getting:

execvp(3) failed.: Permission denied
Terminal will auto-close in 15 seconds ...

Logs show this for the shell startup:

info:    ▪ [LENS-CORE-MAIN]: Successfully ensured kubectl 1.34.1-eks-3cfe0ce at "/usr/local/bin/" +119ms
info:    ┏ [UNIX-SHELL-ENV]: running against /bin/zsh +84ms
info:    ┃ [1] {
info:    ┃ [2]   command: ` '/tmp/.mount_Lens-2c1qLzM/lens-desktop' -p '"39e745c27ee34dcb9da6736811a0dcc5" + JSON.stringify(process.env) + "39e745c27ee34dcb9da6736811a0dcc5"'`,
info:    ┃ [3]   shellArgs: [ '-l', '-i' ]
info:    ┗ [4] }
info:    ▪ [POD-SHELL]: PTY for 8c580c18e76144b083e10c6fac87dbad:8546036a-f812-46b7-9ece-bac32564a331 is started with PID=1817966 +145ms
info:    ▪ [TELEMETRY-MAIN]: pod open  +0ms
GSSAPI client step 1
GSSAPI client step 1
GSSAPI client step 1
info:    ▪ [POD-SHELL]: shell has exited for 8c580c18e76144b083e10c6fac87dbad:8546036a-f812-46b7-9ece-bac32564a331 closed with exitcode=1 +99ms

Using latest release:

Lens: 2025.10.230725-latest
Electron: 38.2.2
Chrome: 140.0.7339.133
Node: 22.19.0

Reverting to some older version i get this before the terminal closes:

zsh: read-only variable: STORAGE_DRIVER

Tying to debug this and find where this is coming from. Any suggestions?

thanks,
Itiel

#2

Hello @itiel.olenick,

Thank you for reaching out to Lens Forum!

Did you check the accessible to terminal outside of Lens?

We are waiting for you to reply.

Best Regards,
Tikhon Kudinov
Lens Support Engineer
Mirantis, Inc

#3

Hi @itiel.olenick,

thanks for the report and the extra details.

The older version showing
zsh: read-only variable: STORAGE_DRIVER
suggests this is coming from your local zsh setup rather than from Lens or the pod itself. Usually that happens when a startup script marks STORAGE_DRIVER as read-only and then tries to change it again, which makes zsh exit immediately. In the newer Lens build that failure bubbles up as the execvp(3) failed: Permission denied message you’re seeing.

As a quick check, could you run this in a normal terminal (outside of Lens)?

/bin/zsh -l -i -c 'echo OK'
If you get the same error there, you can search for where STORAGE_DRIVER is set with:

grep -R "STORAGE_DRIVER" ~/.zsh* ~/.config/zsh /etc/zsh* /etc/profile.d 2>/dev/null

and adjust that script so it doesn’t declare the variable read-only and then reassign it.

We’ll also check on our side how we can surface the underlying shell error more clearly instead of the generic execvp message.
Thanks again for flagging this.

#4

Hi @crothmann thanks for the quick reply.
So after making some changes to the way STORAGE_DRIVER is set and locked, im still getting the same error when trying to open a pod shell (terminal tab works though and no longer shows the zsh: read-only variable: STORAGE_DRIVER error.
Is there any way to debug this further using some logging debug env var or flag when starting lens?

#5

Ok found the issues:
As for the zsh: read-only variable: STORAGE_DRIVER - this was caused by one of the profile scripts running twice.
As for the execvp(3) failed.: Permission denied - this was caused by the path to the kubectl executable set to /usr/local/bin/ instead of /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Thanks for the help guys!

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