I try to run a clone command to create a local repository in a startup script which runs at boot.  The command fails, and when standard error is redirected to a file, the cryptic message "fossil: cannot local home directory" is found.  The same command succeeds when run from the command line while logged in at a terminal.

The command looks like:
 fossil clone http://<user>:<pass>@localhost:7071 /home/<user>/fossil/repository.fsl

The script is run as root, the directory /home/<user>/fossil exists, a local tunnel is created to a remote repository via ssh.

For debugging purposes, I edited the startup script so that the clone command is in a while loop as long as repository.fsl doesn't exist.  While the startup script was stuck in the loop, I logged in and executed the clone command on the command line as root, and it worked fine.  This suggests there is no problem with the tunnel or environment.