capistrano + git deployment: could not create work tree dir : Permission denied - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm deploying using git and capistrano with passenger. I've been banging my head for a few hours trying to make this work, and haven't made much progress. cap deploy:setup works ok, but cap deploy is failing with Permission issues. I tried changing permissions/ownership on my slice, but it's still failing.
require 'bundler/capistrano'
set :user, 'some_user'
set :domain, 'example.com'
set :applicationdir, "/home/some_user/public_html/example"
set :port, 30000
set :scm, 'git'
set :repository, "ssh://git#123.45.678.910:50000/home/git/example"
set :branch, 'master'
set :scm_verbose, true
# roles (servers)
role :web, domain
role :app, domain
role :db, domain, :primary => true
# deploy config
set :deploy_to, applicationdir
set :deploy_via, :remote_cache
# additional settings
default_run_options[:pty] = true
ssh_options[:forward_agent] = true
# Passenger
namespace :deploy do
task :start do ; end
task :stop do ; end
task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do
run "#{try_sudo} touch #{File.join(current_path,'tmp','restart.txt')}"
end
end
results in the following error:
executing `deploy'
* executing `deploy:update'
** transaction: start
* executing `deploy:update_code'
updating the cached checkout on all servers
executing locally: "git ls-remote ssh://git#123.45.678.910:50000/home/git/example.com master"
/Users/some_user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/capistrano-2.6.0/lib/capistrano/recipes/deploy.rb:104: warning: Insecure world writable dir /usr/local/bin in PATH, mode 040777
command finished in 78068ms
* executing "if [ -d /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy ]; then cd /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy && git fetch origin && git fetch --tags origin && git reset --hard c7f73668d0656c665a6445c33870d05a8550ab2c && git clean -d -x -f; else git clone ssh://git#123.45.678.910:50000/home/git/example.com /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy && cd /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy && git checkout -b deploy c7f73668d0656c665a6445c33870d05a8550ab2c; fi"
servers: ["example.com"]
[example.com] executing command
** [example.com :: out] fatal: could not create work tree dir '/home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy'.: Permission denied
command finished in 353ms
*** [deploy:update_code] rolling back
* executing "rm -rf /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/releases/20110610173027; true"
servers: ["example.com"]
[example.com] executing command
command finished in 218ms
failed: "sh -c 'if [ -d /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy ]; then cd /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy && git fetch origin && git fetch --tags origin && git reset --hard c7f73668d0656c665a6445c33870d05a8550ab2c && git clean -d -x -f; else git clone ssh://git#123.45.678.910:50000/home/git/example.com /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy && cd /home/some_user/public_html/example.com/shared/cached-copy && git checkout -b deploy c7f73668d0656c665a6445c33870d05a8550ab2c; fi'" on example.com

Answer 1

Not sure how much this will help, but I always have a permissions issue after a deploy:setup
When you run deploy:setup it creates the initial directories for you. However those folders it creates are usually owned by root (In most of my situations anyway).
webapp/
shared root:root
releases root:root
To remedy this I will change ownership of those new folders to the user that will be using.
webapp/
shared myuser:myuser
releases myuser:myuser
Once this is done, I'll continue with my deploy:update

Answer 2

I've just encountered this problem as well. Here's what I found out.
If you have not yet been able to deploy successfully, you might want to temporarily move your deploy folder (in your server) to another location (or simply rename it)
Make sure you have this inside your recipe: set :use_sudo, false
Run this again: cap deploy:setup
Then try another run of cap deploy
You will definitely run into other troubles with permissions if you have built your deploy folders using the wrong user and tell capistrano that it has sudo permissions.
I hope this works for you, as it worked for me.