Grails deployment issues (WAR & Tomcat)

Question

I'm working on deploying a WAR under Tomcat 6 on a remote server. Now if I deploy as such on my local machine everything works fine. Remote deployment triggers a very unfriendly set of exceptions.

log4j:ERROR setFile(null,true) call failed.
java.io.FileNotFoundException: stacktrace.log (Permission denied)
    at java.io.FileOutputStream.openAppend(Native Method)
    at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:207)
    at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:131)
    at org.apache.log4j.FileAppender.setFile(FileAppender.java:294)
    at org.apache.log4j.FileAppender.activateOptions(FileAppender.java:165)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616)
    <...snip>
ERROR  initWebApplicationContext, Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'messageSource': Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'transactionManager': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'sessionFactory' while setting bean property 'sessionFactory'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'sessionFactory': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'hibernateProperties' while setting bean property 'hibernateProperties'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'hibernateProperties': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'dialectDetector' while setting bean property 'properties' with key [hibernate.dialect]; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'dialectDetector': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.jdbc.support.MetaDataAccessException: Error while extracting DatabaseMetaData; nested exception is org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:636)
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'transactionManager': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'sessionFactory' while setting bean property 'sessionFactory'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'sessionFactory': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'hibernateProperties' while setting bean property 'hibernateProperties'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'hibernateProperties': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'dialectDetector' while setting bean property 'properties' with key [hibernate.dialect]; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'dialectDetector': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.jdbc.support.MetaDataAccessException: Error while extracting DatabaseMetaData; nested exception is org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    ... 1 more
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'sessionFactory': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'hibernateProperties' while setting bean property 'hibernateProperties'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'hibernateProperties': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'dialectDetector' while setting bean property 'properties' with key [hibernate.dialect]; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'dialectDetector': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.jdbc.support.MetaDataAccessException: Error while extracting DatabaseMetaData; nested exception is org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    ... 1 more
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'hibernateProperties': Cannot resolve reference to bean 'dialectDetector' while setting bean property 'properties' with key [hibernate.dialect]; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'dialectDetector': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.jdbc.support.MetaDataAccessException: Error while extracting DatabaseMetaData; nested exception is org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    ... 1 more
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'dialectDetector': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.jdbc.support.MetaDataAccessException: Error while extracting DatabaseMetaData; nested exception is org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    ... 1 more
Caused by: org.springframework.jdbc.support.MetaDataAccessException: Error while extracting DatabaseMetaData; nested exception is org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    ... 1 more
Caused by: org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied))
    at org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1225)
    at org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource.getConnection(BasicDataSource.java:880)
    at $Proxy15.getMetaData(Unknown Source)
    ... 1 more
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: File input/output error prodDB.properties java.io.FileNotFoundException: prodDB.properties.new (Permission denied)
    at org.hsqldb.jdbc.Util.sqlException(Unknown Source)
    at org.hsqldb.jdbc.jdbcConnection.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver.getConnection(Unknown Source)
    at org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver.connect(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.commons.dbcp.DriverConnectionFactory.createConnection(DriverConnectionFactory.java:38)
    at org.apache.commons.dbcp.PoolableConnectionFactory.makeObject(PoolableConnectionFactory.java:294)
    at org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource.validateConnectionFactory(BasicDataSource.java:1247)
    at org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1221)
    ... 3 more

I'm using HSQLDB as the database.

Tomcat is run as a service, so there shouldn't be any permission issues. Do I need to change permissions on something (if so where, because I can't find the attempted access)? Is there a configuration option I can set in Grails to either not log or redirect the logging?

Answer 1

This isn't about logging, it's about "prodDB.properties". You're getting a FileNotFoundException because it can't write (or possibly rename) it. The user that's running the app must not have write permission in the directory where it's creating the HSQLDB database files.

The default config uses a relative path, so it's writing wherever the app is launching from:

production {
    dataSource {
        dbCreate = "update"
        url = "jdbc:hsqldb:file:prodDb;shutdown=true"
    }
}

One fix is to hard-code the path in DataSource.groovy:

production {
    dataSource {
        dbCreate = "update"
        url = "jdbc:hsqldb:file:/some/writeable/folder/prodDb;shutdown=true"
    }
}

A better one is to enable external configuration files in Config.groovy:

grails.config.locations = ["classpath:${appName}-config.groovy"]

and create foo-config.groovy containing

dataSource {
    url = "jdbc:hsqldb:file:/some/writeable/folder/prodDb;shutdown=true"
}

and put foo-config.groovy in $TOMCAT_HOME/lib which is in Tomcat's classpath (change foo to your app name). This way you can deploy the war to multiple locations and have just a config file override rather than hard-coding a single value in Config.groovy.

Answer 2

I suddenly encountered this problem when I upgraded to Windows 7. I had been using a shortcut to start Tomcat and I set the "Start In" directory to just plain "C:\". Windows 7 does not let non-admin users write into this directory. I created a subdirectory of my user home called "TomcatData" and changed my shortcut to start Tomcat from there. Everything now works fine.