capistrano deployment nightmare

Question

I am getting the followoing error when I try to do a deploy via a "deploy" user account.

  1782001..ae10d1b  master -> master
 ** transaction: start
  * executing `deploy:update_code'
    updating the cached checkout on all servers
    executing locally: "git ls-remote [email protected]:username/app_name.git master"
  * executing "if [ -d /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy ]; then cd /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy && git fetch -q origin && git reset -q --hard ae10d1bfe43820d8d69bbc92761a3f666cf56765 && git clean -q -d -x -f; else git clone -q [email protected]:username/app_name.git /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy && cd /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy && git checkout -q -b deploy ae10d1bfe43820d8d69bbc92761a3f666cf56765; fi"
    servers: ["173.230.158.13"]
    [173.230.158.13] executing command
 ** [173.230.158.13 :: out] error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied
 ** 
    command finished
*** [deploy:update_code] rolling back
  * executing "rm -rf /var/www/app_name/releases/20100930022459; true"
    servers: ["173.230.158.13"]
    [173.230.158.13] executing command
    command finished
failed: "sh -c 'if [ -d /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy ]; then cd /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy && git fetch -q origin && git reset -q --hard ae10d1bfe43820d8d69bbc92761a3f666cf56765 && git clean -q -d -x -f; else git clone -q [email protected]:username/app_name.git /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy && cd /var/www/app_name/shared/cached-copy && git checkout -q -b deploy ae10d1bfe43820d8d69bbc92761a3f666cf56765; fi'" on 173.230.158.13

I can verify that I can do a "git clone" using the deploy account on the server and ssh to [email protected]

The same recipe works just fine if i specify "root" as the :user variable.

Here is my deploy.rb

http://pastie.org/1189919

Also, I am not sure what exactly does the :group variable does in this recipe.

drwxr-xr-x 14 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 ..
drwxr-xr-x  7 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 13:13 app
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data    240 2010-09-29 20:38 Capfile
drwxr-xr-x  5 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 config
drwxr-xr-x  4 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 db
drwxr-xr-x  2 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 doc
drwxr-xr-x  9 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 generate
drwxr-xr-x  8 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 .git
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data    156 2010-09-29 20:38 .gitignore
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data    145 2010-09-29 20:38 .gitignore~
drwxr-xr-x  3 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 lib
lrwxrwxrwx  1 deploy www-data     28 2010-09-29 20:38 log -> /var/www/voteable/shared/log
drwxr-xr-x  5 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 public
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data    457 2010-09-29 20:38 Rakefile
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data  10011 2010-09-29 20:38 README
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data     41 2010-09-29 20:38 REVISION
drwxr-xr-x  3 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 script
drwxr-xr-x  6 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 test
drwxr-xr-x  2 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 20:38 tmp
-rwxr-xr-x  1 deploy www-data 810605 2010-09-29 20:38 uninstall
drwxr-xr-x  3 deploy www-data   4096 2010-09-29 13:13 vendor

Answer 1

You need to make sure that you own .git so you should never do a checkout as root or you're going to run into this problem.

chmod -R ug+rw .git will fix the problem this time but you have to be diligent about keeping your coworkers from doing manual git pulls or work on setting up group permissions correctly.