yocto/bitbake build attempts to chown files to root and fails - linux

Question

I am trying to use yocto to build an image for a zedboard. My first build failed when it attempted to chown a bunch of files to root. It failed as part of a do_install command in one of the meta layers. The command executed this chown line:
chown -R root:root ${D}
I run bitbake as a normal, non-root user. Shouldn't I be able to compile it as non-root?
Just to test I created a new file and tried to chown to root:root and it failed in exactly the same way.
What am I missing here?
UPDATE: Looks like this is related to the use pseudo. I tried building poky without any additional layers (no xilinx, openembedded, etc) and it still failed with the same error. I tried both the jethro and fido releases with the same error.
UPDATE 2: Apparently pseudo is disabled in meta/conf/bitbake.conf. I am not sure why or how to proceed knowing this:
# Use pseudo as the fakeroot implementation
PSEUDO_LOCALSTATEDIR ?= "${WORKDIR}/pseudo/"
PSEUDO_PASSWD ?= "${STAGING_DIR_TARGET}:${STAGING_DIR_NATIVE}"
export PSEUDO_DISABLED = "1"
#export PSEUDO_PREFIX = "${STAGING_DIR_NATIVE}${prefix_native}"
#export PSEUDO_BINDIR = "${STAGING_DIR_NATIVE}${bindir_native}"
#export PSEUDO_LIBDIR = "${STAGING_DIR_NATIVE}$PSEUDOBINDIR/../lib/pseudo/lib
FAKEROOTBASEENV = "PSEUDO_BINDIR=${STAGING_BINDIR_NATIVE} PSEUDO_LIBDIR=${STAGING_BINDIR_NATIVE}/../lib/pseudo/lib PSEUDO_PREFIX=${STAGING_BINDIR_NATIVE}/../../ PSEUDO_DISABLED=1"
FAKEROOTCMD = "${STAGING_BINDIR_NATIVE}/pseudo"
FAKEROOTENV = "PSEUDO_PREFIX=${STAGING_DIR_NATIVE}${prefix_native} PSEUDO_LOCALSTATEDIR=${PSEUDO_LOCALSTATEDIR} PSEUDO_PASSWD=${PSEUDO_PASSWD} PSEUDO_NOSYMLINKEXP=1 PSEUDO_DISABLED=0"
FAKEROOTNOENV = "PSEUDO_UNLOAD=1"
FAKEROOTDIRS = "${PSEUDO_LOCALSTATEDIR}"
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/fakeroot-native ?= "pseudo-native"

Answer 1

What recipe in what layer? do_install for target packages runs under pseudo (a fake-root utility) so it can chown to root as a non-root user.

Answer 2

You should not chown files to root this is most probably the reason you get such kind of errors.
Why you want to do so?
This happened to me many times when I use bitbake as a root or when compiling with sudo. You no need privilege user for building. Actually what you really need is a user within the sudo group.
Instead can you tried the following
create yocto build user
groupadd -g 1000 build && useradd -u 1000 -g 1000 -ms /bin/bash build && usermod -a -G sudo build && usermod -a -G root build && usermod -a -G staff build
useradd -u 1000 -g 1000 -ms /bin/bash 1001 && usermod -a -G sudo 1001 && usermod -a -G root 1001 && usermod -a -G staff 1001
Chown all your files to sudo group user e.g build.
Then, grant read and write permissions
Remove tmp and cache files in the build folder.
Source the bitbake
Finally try to build.