We have just changed the user that runs Jenkins, and we have several jobs that have a custom workspace and deletes them before start through the Delete workspace before build starts configuration. But after the user switch, a few of our jobs started failing because it was started in a "dirty" workspace. If I try to delete the workspace using the wui, I get a:

Status Code: 500

Exception: 
Stacktrace:
java.io.IOException: Unable to delete /nfs/vm/temp/proj/folder/MainApp.xsl

It seems that the folder can only be deleted by the older user. This is all fine, but if Jenkins can not delete the workspace it should fail the build as its a pre requisite for the complete build.

This is what I see in the failed log:

Started by user anonymous
Building on master

Deleting project workspace... [carmsys_cms2] $ /bin/sh -xe /tmp/hudson1908599801736038935.sh
+ export CARMSYS_CLONE=/carm/proj/

I was expecting either an exception or simple failure message saying "Could not delete workspace, failing build".