# Gnarly permission issue using fcgi

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gnarly-permission-issue-using-fcgi/107339>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 20, 2007, 5:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gnarly-permission-issue-using-fcgi/107339 "2007-06-20T17:51:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sbeam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@sbeam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sbeam)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gnarly-permission-issue-using-fcgi/107339/1 "2007-06-20T17:51:02Z")

</div>

deploying a Rails app for the first time on a mediatemple (dv) server  
using capistrano and fcgi

everything looks OK but when I go to access the app, I get 500 errors  
with things like

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:1246:in `initialize’: Permission  
denied -  
/var/www/vhosts/xxxxxxx.com/app/current/public/…/config/…/public/stylesheets/dhtml\_calendar/demo.css  
(Errno::EACCES)

these are for stylesheets (?!) - I looked at fileutils.rb and at that  
line it is trying to open the file for writing, as part of copy\_file().  
If I make the file world-writable it just hangs up on the next one in  
line. Why is it trying to copy the files anyway?

Surely the whole app doesn’t have to be writable by Apache, right? I was  
following the otherwise excellent guide here

> **[Setting up Ruby on Rails and Using Capistrano to Deploy Ruby on Rails...](https://berbs.us/2007/02/setting-up-ruby-on-rails-and-using-capistrano-to-deploy-ruby-on-rails-applications-to-media-temple-dedicated-virtual-server-30/)**
>
> Note: This tutorial is now quite dated, so I would not recommend attempting to follow it. Instead, take a look at Media Temple’s instructions for configuring Mongrel Clusters. I recently deployed a Ruby on Rails application to Media Temple’s...

but it makes no mention of permissions issues.

Anyone have any idea what I screwed up?

thanks  
Sam