passenger doesn't have permission to create /var/www/.passenger

[Sam Walton]

I've followed the instructions to deploy my small Sinatra app in Ubuntu Trusty, using rvm and ruby 2.12, nginx. The app tries to start but I think it's trying to do the right thing by installing some missing components. The odd thing is it's trying to install them in /var/www ... which needs sudo access. I've looked at the nginx conf files but don't see why it's getting this as a default location. This app was running last year but it's not now so I'm trying to get it to work. 

Following are conf files that may help.

Output of /tmp/passenger_native_support-1sumzza.log

# current user is: www-data

# mkdir -p /var/www/.passenger/native_support/5.0.28/ruby-2.1.2-x86-linux

Encountered permission error, but no more directories to try. Giving up.

Sure, while my harper user is part of the www-data group, it's not root. I need help figuring out the permissions here.

groups harper 

harper sudo www-data

I have attempted to change the user in nginx.conf from www-data to harper but no different output.

sudo chmod g+x,o+x /home/harper/harper/contact.rb

sudo chmod g+x,o+x /home/harper/harper/

sudo chmod g+x,o+x /home/harper/

Environment variables

PASSENGER_USE_FEEDBACK_FD=true
SERVER_SOFTWARE=nginx/1.10.0 Phusion_Passenger/5.0.28
PASSENGER_DEBUG_DIR=/tmp/passenger.spawn-debug.XXXXsfCHyg
USER=www-data
LOGNAME=www-data
SHELL=/usr/sbin/nologin
HOME=/var/www
PWD=/home/harper/harper
IN_PASSENGER=1
PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
NODE_PATH=/usr/share/passenger/node
RAILS_ENV=production
RACK_ENV=production
WSGI_ENV=production
NODE_ENV=production

PASSENGER_APP_ENV=production

passenger-config —root

/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini

[locations]

packaging_method=deb

bin_dir=/usr/bin

support_binaries_dir=/usr/lib/passenger/support-binaries

lib_dir=/usr/lib/passenger

helper_scripts_dir=/usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts

resources_dir=/usr/share/passenger

include_dir=/usr/share/passenger/include

doc_dir=/usr/share/doc/passenger

ruby_libdir=/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby

node_libdir=/usr/share/passenger/node

apache2_module_path=/usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_passenger.so

ruby_extension_source_dir=/usr/share/passenger/ruby_extension_source

nginx_module_source_dir=/usr/share/passenger/ngx_http_passenger_module

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user www-data;

worker_processes 4;

pid /run/nginx.pid;

events {

        worker_connections 768;

        # multi_accept on;

}

http {

        ##

        # Basic Settings

        ##

        sendfile on;

        tcp_nopush on;

        tcp_nodelay on;

        keepalive_timeout 65;

        types_hash_max_size 2048;

        # server_tokens off;

        # server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;

        # server_name_in_redirect off;

        passenger_root /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini;

        include /etc/nginx/mime.types;

        default_type application/octet-stream;

        ##

        # Logging Settings

        ##

        access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;

        error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

        server {

            #listen 80;

            #server_name www.harpersolar.biz;

            #root /home/harper/harper/app/;

            #passenger_enabled on;

            #passenger_friendly_error_pages on;

            #passenger_startup_file contact.rb;

            #passenger_app_type rack;

            #passenger_ruby /home/harper/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/wrappers/ruby;

        }

        ##

        # Gzip Settings

        ##

        gzip on;

        gzip_disable "msie6";

        # gzip_vary on;

        # gzip_proxied any;

        # gzip_comp_level 6;

        # gzip_buffers 16 8k;

        # gzip_http_version 1.1;

        # gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

        ##

        # nginx-naxsi config

        # nginx-naxsi config

        ##

        # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-naxsi

        ##

        # include /etc/nginx/naxsi_core.rules;

        ##

        # Phusion Passenger config

        ##

        # Uncomment it if you installed passenger or passenger-enterprise

        ##

        passenger_ruby /home/harper/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/wrappers/ruby;

        #passenger_ruby /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/;

        ##

        # Virtual Host Configs

        ##

        include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;

        include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/harper.biz.conf;

/etc/nginx/sites-available/harper.biz.conf

server {

        listen 80 default_server;

        listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;

        root /home/harper/harper/app;

        #index index.html index.htm;

        # Make site accessible from http://localhost/

        server_name harper.biz;

        # Turn on Passenger

        passenger_enabled on;

        passenger_ruby /home/harper/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/wrappers/ruby;

        passenger_friendly_error_pages on;

        passenger_startup_file contact.rb; #passenger will not start without this key/value

        passenger_app_type rack;

        location / {

                # First attempt to serve request as file, then

                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.

                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;

                # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location

                # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules

        }

}

Apparently, passenger doesn't see it has what it needs and is trying to install it. But it's pointed to a directory that it doesn't have permission.

I've googled and re-read the docs to see what user passenger is thinking it has. What am I overlooking? thx, sam

[William Pratt]

Can you give us a ls -al on that directory?

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[William Pratt]

Another thing that may shed some light is to run passenger under strace -f

[Daniel Knoppel]

Is your app not working? Native support compilation is not needed for normal operation (as the error should mention), it doesn't matter that it fails.

Either way you should set the user for Passenger is set with passenger_user, not by changing the Nginx user. The default user that Passenger uses is the owner of the app's startup file.

- Daniel

[Sam Walton]

The ls -al on /var/www is

drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 May  8 17:37 .

drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Sep 16  2014 ..

drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 May  8 17:37 .passenger

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   19 Sep 16  2014 harper -> /home/harper/harper

Of course /var/www should be owned by root. Could I add the www-data group to it?

Running passenger with strace on the standalone reveals many file/directory not found. Will have to work through those. Thx for the pointers, sam

[Sam Walton]

Even adding this key with the value set to harper reveals no difference in output, sam

[Daniel Knoppel]

You haven't provided any output that shows your app isn't working. As I said before, the error you posted does not need to be solved for normal operation of Passenger.

- Daniel

[Sam Walton]

Yes, 

Web application could not be started

is my indicator that the application is not running per http://harpersolar.biz

I think, however, you are right. In the stacktrace the sinatra app attempts to run, but runs into 403 errors and then attempts to install software into directories it cannot run. Still trying to fix this, sam