Capistrano-unicorn gem getting wrong environment set - ruby-on-rails

Question

I've been using this gem for a while and just took the dive to try deploying an actual staging environment to my staging server, and I ran into issues. Unicorn starts with the command unicorn_rails and -E production despite all the settings being correct afaik.
I noticed in deploy.rb that my unicorn_bin variable was set as unicorn_rails. I took out this setting in my deploy.rb. However unicorn:duplicate still executes the unicorn_rails command, when the default should be unicorn.
My vars are all set to staging in the deploy/staging.rb, as outlined in the multistage setup wiki document, but I noticed -E is still getting set to production.
Relevent info:
Here's my output from my unicorn.log file after a deploy:
executing ["/var/www/apps/myapp/shared/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/bin/unicorn_rails", "-c", "/var/www/apps/bundio/current/config/unicorn.rb", "-E", "production", "-D", {12=>#<Kgio::UNIXServer:/tmp/bundio.socket>, 13=>#<Kgio::TCPServer:fd 13>}] (in /var/www/apps/bundio/current)
Here's the output from cap -T (defaults to staging)
# Environments
rails_env "staging"
unicorn_env "staging"
unicorn_rack_env "staging"
# Execution
unicorn_user nil
unicorn_bundle "/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247#global/bin/bundle"
unicorn_bin "unicorn"
unicorn_options ""
unicorn_restart_sleep_time 2
# Relative paths
app_subdir ""
unicorn_config_rel_path "config"
unicorn_config_filename "unicorn.rb"
unicorn_config_rel_file_path "config/unicorn.rb"
unicorn_config_stage_rel_file_path "config/unicorn/staging.rb"
# Absolute paths
app_path "/var/www/apps/myapp/current"
unicorn_pid "/var/www/apps/myapp/shared/pids/unicorn.myapp.pid"
bundle_gemfile "/var/www/apps/myapp/current/Gemfile"
unicorn_config_path "/var/www/apps/myapp/current/config"
unicorn_config_file_path "/var/www/apps/myapp/current/config/unicorn.rb"
unicorn_config_stage_file_path
-> "/var/www/apps/myapp/current/config/unicorn/staging.rb"
And another curiousity, the unicorn_rails -E flag should reference the rails environment, whereas the unicorn -E should reference the rack env -- the rack env should only get the values developement and deployment, but it gets set to production, which is a bit strange (see unicorn docs for settings of the RACK_ENV variable.
Any insight into this would be much appreciated. On my staging server, I've also set the RAILS_ENV to staging. I've set up the things for rails for another environment, like adding staging.rb in my environments folder, adding a staging section to database.yml, etc.
Important lines in lib/capistrano-unicorn/config.rb talking about unicorn_rack_env:
_cset(:unicorn_env) { fetch(:rails_env, 'production' ) }
_cset(:unicorn_rack_env) do
# Following recommendations from http://unicorn.bogomips.org/unicorn_1.html
fetch(:rails_env) == 'development' ? 'development' : 'deployment'
end
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Ok, after a long time not having the correct environment, I have discovered the issue!
Basically, my init scripts were running BEFORE my capistrano-unicorn bin was doing its thing.
So, make sure that your init.d or upstart scripts to manage Unicorn and its workers are taken into account when capistrano-unicorn is doing the unicorn restart / reload / duplication tasks.
I did not think to look at these scripts when I had to debug the stale pid file / already running / unable to listen on socket errors. But it makes sense, as upstart starts Unicorn when it is not running, and then capistrano-unicorn is also attempting to start Unicorn.
I have now combined these capistrano tasks and hooks with Monit and a Unicorn init script.
Capistrano tasks:
namespace :monit do
desc ' wait 20 seconds '
task :wait_20_seconds do
sleep 20
end
task :monitor_all, :roles => :app do
sudo "monit monitor all"
end
task :unmonitor_all, :roles => :app do
sudo "monit unmonitor all"
end
desc 'monitor unicorn in the monit rc file'
task :monitor_unicorn, :roles => :app do
sudo "monit monitor unicorn"
end
desc 'unmonitor unicorn in the monit rc file'
task :unmonitor_unicorn, :roles => :app do
sudo "monit unmonitor unicorn"
end
end
Capistrano hooks:
after 'deploy:restart', 'unicorn:duplicate' # app preloaded. check https://github.com/sosedoff/capistrano-unicorn section for zero downtime
before 'deploy', "monit:unmonitor_unicorn"
before 'deploy:migrations', "monit:unmonitor_unicorn"
after 'deploy', 'monit:wait_20_seconds'
after "deploy:migrations", "monit:wait_20_seconds"
after 'monit:wait_20_seconds', 'monit:monitor_unicorn'
I use Monit to monitor my unicorn process:
Within /etc/monit/monitrc:
check process unicorn
with pidfile /var/www/apps/my_app/shared/pids/mypid.pid
start program = "/usr/bin/sudo service unicorn start"
stop program = "/usr/bin/sudo service unicorn stop"
Within your init script, you will start the unicorn process with something like:
unicorn_rails -c /var/www/apps/my_app/current/config/unicorn.rb -E staging -D
Make sure the -E flag is set to the correct environment. The capistrano-unicorn gem has directives using :set within deploy.rb which allow you to specify the environment for that unicorn process.