Using Passenger with Rails and Apache 2 / SpawnPreparer Permission denied - ruby-on-rails

Question

my environment is as follows:
Ubuntu 10.04
Ruby 2.0.0
Rails 4.0
The deployed Rails application resides in /var/www/application. The deployment is handled by Capistrano, therefore, the directory structure is as follows:
root#lvps91-250-114-42:/var/www/application# ls -la
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data www-data 4096 2013-11-14 12:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 2013-11-12 22:54 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 www-data www-data 39 2013-11-14 12:53 current -> /var/www/application/releases/20131114115156
drwxrwxr-x 11 www-data www-data 4096 2013-11-14 12:51 releases
drwxrwxr-x 8 www-data www-data 4096 2013-11-13 01:49 shared
The config/deploy.rb is configured to use a :local ruby (which has been installed into ../shared). The capistrano config:
require 'bundler/capistrano'
require 'rvm/capistrano'
#....
set :bundle_flags, "--deployment"
set :default_shell, '/bin/bash -l'
set :rvm_ruby_string, :local
#....
before 'deploy:setup', 'rvm:install_rvm'
before 'deploy:setup', 'rvm:install_ruby'
Maybe this plays a role because there is another rvm/ruby installation which is recognized when installing the Passenger. Passenger told me to configure the Apache 2 as follows:
LoadModule passenger_module /root/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/gems/passenger-4.0.24/buildout/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /root/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/gems/passenger-4.0.24
PassengerDefaultRuby /root/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-2.0.0-p247/ruby
But it complained about my .rvm installation (which resides in root :-() and that I will need to change the permissions (but I didn't change them):
It is recommended that you relax permissions as follows:
sudo chmod o+x "/root"
Press Ctrl-C to return to the shell. (Recommended)
After relaxing permissions, re-run this installer.
-OR-
Press Enter to continue anyway.
The corresponding sites-enabled/application configuration:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName subdomain.domain.com
# !!! Be sure to point DocumentRoot to 'public'!
DocumentRoot /var/www/application/current/public
<Directory /var/www/application/current/public>
# This relaxes Apache security settings.
AllowOverride all
# MultiViews must be turned off.
Options -MultiViews
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
When I started the application, I got the following error in my browser:
Cannot execute "/root/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/gems/passenger-4.0.24/buildout/agents/SpawnPreparer": Permission denied (errno=13)
After:
sudo chmod o+x "/root"
Everything is working.
What is your advice to fix it? Should I re-install .rvm and passenger? Can I reconfigure the Apache configuration so that Apache will access all those executables which reside in /var/www/application?
Thank you in advance!!
jepetko

Answer 1

If you have used the rvm installation method for a single user, have you considered setting the ownership of the files for the ruby application to be the same as the owner of rvm?
For myself, I have ran into this problem before and here is what I have done:
Create new user for managing rvm
Add the new user to be able to sudo to root
Login as the new user and install rvm as a single user
Install passenger gem
Run passenger installation for module with rvmsudo
Set the ownership of the ruby application to be the same as the new user account for rvm management
Sometimes I have had to add the following to my apache conf:
SetEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /home/rvmuser/.rvm/default/lib
SetEnv GEM_PATH /home/rvmuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p484:/home/rvmuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p484#global
Hope this helps!

Answer 2

i have same problem with you before and this is how i solve it:
try use set config PassengerUser https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/config/apache/reference/#passengeruser . Set it with user that you use when install rvm. Because you put the rails app on /var/www/ which is that is owned with apache/www-data you need specify user that owned the rvm.
So, based on you example, just add: PassengerUser deploy after or before DocumentRoot config on your apache config.
Don't forget to restart the apache. Good luck.