UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:48.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/48.0

Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. fetch --no-history chromium
2. 
3. 

What is the expected behavior?
pull all source code

What went wrong?
this are the last few lines -
-----------------------------
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/gclient_scm.py", line 450, in update
    self._Clone(revision, url, options)
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/gclient_scm.py", line 970, in _Clone
    if os.listdir(tmp_dir):
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/chromium/src/third_party/ced/_gclient_src_YkVwFR'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/fetch.py", line 353, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/fetch.py", line 348, in main
    return run(options, spec, root)
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/fetch.py", line 342, in run
    return checkout.init()
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/fetch.py", line 142, in init
    self.run_gclient(*sync_cmd)
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/fetch.py", line 76, in run_gclient
    return self.run(cmd_prefix + cmd, **kwargs)
  File "/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/depot_tools/fetch.py", line 66, in run
    return subprocess.check_output(cmd, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 573, in check_output
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd, output=output)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '('gclient', 'sync', '--no-history')' returned non-zero exit status 1
-------------------------

specifically -
...OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/media/p/dt1/chrom-dev/chromium/src/third_party/ced/_gclient_src_YkVwFR'

Did this work before? N/A 

Chrome version: <Copy from: 'about:version'>  Channel: n/a
OS Version: ubuntu 14.04
Flash Version: 

this is the third time I try to pull the source; 
first 2 times were without the --no-history option
I am new to building chromium; did I miss some preliminary step or set-up ?

thanks , p.