Rails 3. getting Errno::EACCES Permission Denied when uploading files on production

Question

The app works fine in development but in production I get Errno::EACCES Permission Denied error when I try to upload a file using Carrierwave. I'm sure it has something to do with permissions. How can I set the permissions to allow file uploads?

pdf_uploader.rb

def store_dir
  "#{Rails.root}/uploads/#{model.id}"
end

def cache_dir
  "#{Rails.root}/tmp/uploads/cache/#{model.id}"
end

Answer 1

As far as I know there are two things that can be going on here:

1) The directory you're saving your images to doesn't have read/write privileges for other users.

To fix:

terminal

$ cd [my_app]
$ chmod -R 666 tmp
$ chmod -R 666 public/uploads

or if you're saving your images in an private directory:

$ chmod -R 666 private/uploads

We're using 666 over 777. 666 allows read and write privileges to a directory, and carrierwave needs to write its images. 777 allows read, write privileges and for executable files to be executed! In other words, a nasty program could be uploaded to your server disguised as an image if you're using 777. Even though carrierwave's extension white-list solves this problem, you should always use 666 over 777.

2) You're not using double quoted strings in the store_dir method.

To fix:

app/example_uploader.rb

class BaseUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
  # other methods removed for brevity

  def store_dir
    "#{Rails.root}/private/" # works perfectly. Many thanks to @RGB
  end

end

Just want to point out how subtle this is. You need double quoted strings and Rails.root! I was doing this:

def store_dir
    Rails.root + '/private' # raises Errno::EACCES error
end

and it was not working at all. So subtle. The community should address this.