PhpStorm cannot create scratch files

3 minutes • 2023-12-07 | phpstorm scratch 

I have been using PhpStorm for a decade now I believe that it is the best IDE for PHP developers.

TLDR

Linux: Check the permissions in ~/.config/JetBrains/PhpStorm2023.3/ for the scratches folder. (your PhpStorm version might be different so check the folder name also.

Storytime

I have recently come across an error that took a bit to figure out.

Whenever I would press Ctrl+Shift+Alt Insert in order to create a new scratch file, I would be presented with a message could not create file scratch.php. Clearly a permissions issue but where is the file created?

In my Linux station I first checked under ~/.local

$ ls -la .local/share/
total 168
drwx------ 19 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  7 08:42 .
drwx------  4 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 13:18 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 30 11:49 applications
...
drwxr-xr-x  3 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  7 08:34 JetBrains
...
drwx------  5 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  2 09:13 Trash

That is probably it, but checking all the files under the JetBrains folder showed no change in permissions or the owner.

After a bit of digging I opted to check the ~/.config folder, which is usually the place where configuration files are stored.

$ ls -la .config/
total 108
drwx------ 22 nikos nikos 4096 Dec  7 08:23 .
drwx------ 30 nikos nikos 4096 Dec  7 08:34 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos 4096 Nov 30 11:57 autostart
...
drwxr-xr-x  3 nikos nikos 4096 Nov 29 18:41 JetBrains
...
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos   27 Nov 29 13:18 xdg-terminals.list

And there it is, the JetBrains folder. Looking a bit deeper:

$ ls -la .config/JetBrains/PhpStorm2023.3/
total 148
drwxr-xr-x 13 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  7 08:34 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:41 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos  3027 Dec  2 19:24 bundled_plugins.txt
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:48 codestyles
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:48 colors
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos  1077 Nov 29 18:43 disabled_plugins.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos     0 Dec  5 10:42 disabled_update.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos    93 Dec  7 08:33 early-access-registry.txt
drwxr-xr-x  5 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:44 event-log-metadata
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:48 inspection
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:49 jdbc-drivers
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos     6 Dec  7 08:34 .lock
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  7 08:42 options
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos    10 Nov 29 18:42 phpstorm64.vmoptions
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos 31076 Dec  2 19:23 phpstorm.key
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos 31076 Nov 29 18:50 plugin_PCWMP.license
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Nov 30 21:41 scratches             <====
drwxr-xr-x  8 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:43 settingsSync
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Nov 29 18:41 ssl
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  5 09:06 tasks
-rw-r--r--  1 nikos nikos  6431 Dec  7 08:24 updatedBrokenPlugins.db
-rw-------  1 nikos nikos    36 Dec  5 09:06 user.web.token
drwxr-xr-x  2 nikos nikos  4096 Dec  7 08:42 workspace

After this, it was just a matter of setting the owner for the file:

sudo chown nikos:nikos -R ~/.config/JetBrains/PhpStorm2023.3/scratches

and now the scratches are working in PhpStorm.

I hope this helps.

  • Nikolaos Dimopoulos

    Boldly goes where no other coder has gone before.... and other ramblings

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