Sorl permissions issues in media directory

[Bastian]

I have read the threads, searched google... to no avail. Stuck.

I have Django running with Apache2  on Debian Squeeze and mod_wsgi in a WSGIDaemonProcess with user=www-data, my user_media directory belongs to www-data and is 777, as is the cache directory inside it. And sometimes the sub-directories inside cache (like d1, f7...) are created by www-data and sometimes they are created by lrprod1 (which is the system user I use to host the code). I have no idea why, and it causes some permissions denied that I cannot workaround with some simple group changing since the directories are not even writable by group.
I did not install this system myself so I may be missing so basic config here. But yet I can't understand how the directories could be created by Django with another user than the one specified in wsgi. I can provide more info, right now I don't see what. How could I investigate that?

Here is an example traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response
   response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/project/apache/../src/project/application/project/generic/views.py", line 23, in home
   context_instance=RequestContext(request))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/shortcuts/__init__.py", line 20, in render_to_response
   return HttpResponse(loader.render_to_string(*args, **kwargs), **httpresponse_kwargs)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 188, in render_to_string
   return t.render(context_instance)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 123, in render
   return self._render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 117, in _render
   return self.nodelist.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 744, in render
   bits.append(self.render_node(node, context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 757, in render_node
   return node.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py", line 127, in render
   return compiled_parent._render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 117, in _render
   return self.nodelist.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 744, in render
   bits.append(self.render_node(node, context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 757, in render_node
   return node.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py", line 64, in render
   result = block.nodelist.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 744, in render
   bits.append(self.render_node(node, context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 757, in render_node
   return node.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 311, in render
   return self.nodelist_true.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 744, in render
   bits.append(self.render_node(node, context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 757, in render_node
   return node.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 500, in render
   output = self.nodelist.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 744, in render
   bits.append(self.render_node(node, context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 757, in render_node
   return node.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/templatetags/cache.py", line 31, in render
   value = self.nodelist.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 744, in render
   bits.append(self.render_node(node, context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 757, in render_node
   return node.render(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 227, in render
   nodelist.append(node.render(context))

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 184, in render
   values = self.sequence.resolve(context, True)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 510, in resolve
   obj = self.var.resolve(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 653, in resolve
   value = self._resolve_lookup(context)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 698, in _resolve_lookup
   current = current()

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/project/apache/../src/project/application/project/street/models.py", line 265, in thumbnails_of_related_objects
   crop="center").url,

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/sorl/thumbnail/shortcuts.py", line 8, in get_thumbnail
   return default.backend.get_thumbnail(file_, geometry_string, **options)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/sorl/thumbnail/base.py", line 61, in get_thumbnail
   thumbnail)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/sorl/thumbnail/base.py", line 87, in _create_thumbnail
   default.engine.write(image, options, thumbnail)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/sorl/thumbnail/engines/base.py", line 74, in write
   thumbnail.write(raw_data)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/sorl/thumbnail/images.py", line 127, in write
   return self.storage.save(self.name, content)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/files/storage.py", line 49, in save
   name = self._save(name, content)

 File "/home/lrprod1/apps/virtual_environments/project/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/files/storage.py", line 187, in _save
   fd = os.open(full_path, os.O_WRONLY | os.O_CREAT | os.O_EXCL | getattr(os, 'O_BINARY', 0))

OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/lrprod1/lr_user_media/cache/75/00/75005dc960e794042cf8d5dca0463898.jpg'

[Bastian]

One more things, there is Redis installed too.

[Chet Pilley]

Are you doing any development work using runserver apart from working
on the Apache-delivered site? Sorl uses the server user's account (in
the Apache case www-data) to create the hashed directory tree, and if
you're using runserver then any directories made with have the
ownership of the server user. So if you're doing some development with
lrprod1 and "do a quick runserver test" before you deploy then you're
going to get some permission inconsistencies.

By default Sorl gives only the owner write permissions, so groups
won't help you here (unless there's a Sorl setting where you can alter
this). To get the out-of-the-box functionality you'll need to remove
any thumbnails you create during testing, or manually fix the
permission on all of resulting directories you make during testing.
You'll also run into issues creating thumbnails as lrprod1 during
testing because www-data will own most things.

Hope that helps more than hurts.

[Bastian]

Sorry I won't be very helpful on that one, I started again from scratch and it's working ok. I'm not even sure it was related to Sorl.