From f1e2240945ac73976fc1404e180daa6261379c15 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Rob Arnold <326113+robarnold@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Tue, 12 May 2026 11:34:46 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] Gracefully handle transiently failing exists calls (#23172)

I have a very repeatable reproduction of an issue where most of my
cameras show a "No frames have been received, check error logs" image in
the UI, but restreaming in HomeAssistant is working flawlessly. The only
errors in the logs I saw were some like this:

`OSError: [Errno 121] Remote I/O error`.

Doing a bit more debugging, it looked like Frigate was failing to create
the thumbnail directory for a camera because it already existed. This
error was a clue as to the class of error. I was surprised to learn that
`os.path.exists` [silently suppresses errors from
os.stat and returns False](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/genericpath.py#L22).
This makes for a plausible series of events: a transient stat call
fails, so Frigate takes the creation path, which gets upset that the
directory already exists.

I found a few other possible cases to fix but did not make an exhaustive
search. It seems that this `exist_ok` flag is used elsewhere within
Frigate so I thought it would be a good solution.

AI disclosure: I used AI to diagnose my issue and asked it to translate
its init-time patches to the container source into this repo. I verified
that its patches solved the problem I was facing. Its theory fits the
facts - I am using a distributed file system and I saw the error in my
logs. I checked the upstream Python code to verify the error suppression
behavior, and read the corresponding Frigate code. I did not use AI to
author this commit message/PR description; all diction and typos here are my own.
---
 frigate/app.py                  | 2 +-
 frigate/record/maintainer.py    | 3 +--
 frigate/track/tracked_object.py | 3 +--
 3 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/frigate/app.py b/frigate/app.py
index b6a94ed66..8b5766148 100644
--- a/frigate/app.py
+++ b/frigate/app.py
@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ class FrigateApp:
         for d in dirs:
             if not os.path.exists(d) and not os.path.islink(d):
                 logger.info(f"Creating directory: {d}")
-                os.makedirs(d)
+                os.makedirs(d, exist_ok=True)
             else:
                 logger.debug(f"Skipping directory: {d}")
 
diff --git a/frigate/record/maintainer.py b/frigate/record/maintainer.py
index 6d25622f4..62d4ad8cb 100644
--- a/frigate/record/maintainer.py
+++ b/frigate/record/maintainer.py
@@ -610,8 +610,7 @@ class RecordingMaintainer(threading.Thread):
             camera,
         )
 
-        if not os.path.exists(directory):
-            os.makedirs(directory)
+        os.makedirs(directory, exist_ok=True)
 
         # file will be in utc due to start_time being in utc
         file_name = f"{start_time.strftime('%M.%S.mp4')}"
diff --git a/frigate/track/tracked_object.py b/frigate/track/tracked_object.py
index a041e5802..03117df69 100644
--- a/frigate/track/tracked_object.py
+++ b/frigate/track/tracked_object.py
@@ -531,8 +531,7 @@ class TrackedObject:
 
         directory = os.path.join(THUMB_DIR, self.camera_config.name)
 
-        if not os.path.exists(directory):
-            os.makedirs(directory)
+        os.makedirs(directory, exist_ok=True)
 
         thumb_bytes = self.get_thumbnail("webp")