"could not spawn process"/SSL error

[kyle westfall]

Being new to Ruby and Phusion Passenger, I could really use some help.

setup:

Ubuntu 14.04

Apache2 version 2.4.7

OpenSSL version 1.0.1f

Ruby version 1.9.3p484

running on a virtual machine

I installed a program that uses Passenger and i keep getting this error from apache error.log:

[ 2015-12-31 09:17:42.2736 1559/7fb584a21700 Pool2/Implementation.cpp:883 ]: Could not spawn process for group /usr/share/concerto#default: An error occured while starting up the preloader.

    in 'void Passenger::ApplicationPool2::SmartSpawner::handleErrorResponse(Passenger::ApplicationPool2::SmartSpawner::StartupDetails&)' (SmartSpawner.h:455)

    in 'std::string Passenger::ApplicationPool2::SmartSpawner::negotiatePreloaderStartup(Passenger::ApplicationPool2::SmartSpawner::StartupDetails&)' (SmartSpawner.h:566)

    in 'void Passenger::ApplicationPool2::SmartSpawner::startPreloader()' (SmartSpawner.h:206)

    in 'virtual Passenger::ApplicationPool2::ProcessPtr Passenger::ApplicationPool2::SmartSpawner::spawn(const Passenger::ApplicationPool2::Options&)' (SmartSpawner.h:752)

    in 'void Passenger::ApplicationPool2::Group::spawnThreadRealMain(const SpawnerPtr&, const Passenger::ApplicationPool2::Options&, unsigned int)' (Implementation.cpp:804)

[ 2015-12-31 09:17:42.2737 1559/7fb585b62700 agents/HelperAgent/RequestHandler.h:2088 ]: [Client 20] Cannot checkout session.

Error page:

SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv3 read server certificate B: certificate verify failed (Faraday::SSLError)

More information:

Our network admin has certain aspects of apt-get block on our network to protect from man-in-the-middle attacks, I don't know any details . In order to get this program to install properly, they temporarily unblocked it and I was able to update it and get it working. 

the problem is that if anything happens with the server, I get this error and the application becomes unusable and I have to revert. I know it will happen if I restart the server, but it also just happens after a few minutes of working fine. If I have our network admin unblock apt-get and run a apt-get update it will work fine again. I am not really sure where else I need to be looking.

Any help would be greatly appreaciated.

-Kyle

[Daniel Knoppel]

I don't see how apt-get has anything to do with this error.  Even if you've installed Passenger through apt, then once it is installed another apt-get update won't change anything about Passenger.

In general this error means your application has trouble starting so you need to check in your application what it's doing during startup, for example trying to connect to some other service and discuss with the network admin to allow that to always work.

- Daniel