+/*
+ * On some filesystems (e.g. nfs), mkdir will validate access rights before
+ * checking for the existence of the path element. This means that on a setup
+ * where "/home/" is a mounted NFS share, and running as an unpriviledged user,
+ * recursively creating a path of the form "/home/my_user/trace/" will fail with
+ * EACCES on mkdir("/home", ...).
+ *
+ * Performing a stat(...) on the path to check for existence allows us to
+ * work around this behaviour.
+ */
+static
+int mkdir_check_exists(const char *path, mode_t mode)
+{
+ int ret = 0;
+ struct stat st;
+
+ ret = stat(path, &st);
+ if (ret == 0) {
+ if (S_ISDIR(st.st_mode)) {
+ /* Directory exists, skip. */
+ goto end;
+ } else {
+ /* Exists, but is not a directory. */
+ errno = ENOTDIR;
+ ret = -1;
+ goto end;
+ }
+ }
+
+ /*
+ * Let mkdir handle other errors as the caller expects mkdir
+ * semantics.
+ */
+ ret = mkdir(path, mode);
+end:
+ return ret;
+}
+