Apache + Passenger fails to run in a container?

Question

I can run my application locally on my machine, but when I take the entire directory and move it into a container, it fails to run. It's a fairly simple Rails app - locally in runs using Thin, but in my Docker container it runs using Apache and Passenger. It appears Passenger is failing to start, but I cannot seem to drill any deeper than this:

[Sun Oct 04 22:40:45.140406 2015] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 6:tid 140105055864704] AH00489: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Phusion_Passenger/5.0.20 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Sun Oct 04 22:40:45.140440 2015] [core:notice] [pid 6:tid 140105055864704] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/apache2 -D FOREGROUND'
App 515 stdout:
App 515 stdout:
[ 2015-10-04 22:41:50.7810 414/7fe8f826e700 age/Cor/App/Implementation.cpp:303 ]: Could not spawn process for application /home/hark/production/current: An error occured while starting up the preloader.
  Error ID: e7621c04
  Error details saved to: /tmp/passenger-error-RBzpxa.html
  Message from application: stack level too deep (SystemStackError)
  /usr/lib/ruby/2.2.0/open-uri.rb:29:in `respond_to?'
  /usr/lib/ruby/2.2.0/open-uri.rb:29:in `open'
  /usr/lib/ruby/2.2.0/logger.rb:628:in `open_logfile'
  /usr/lib/ruby/2.2.0/logger.rb:643:in `rescue in create_logfile'

  [... Many thousands of lines ...]

  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/railties-3.2.22/lib/rails/initializable.rb:55:in `block in run_initializers'
  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/railties-3.2.22/lib/rails/initializable.rb:54:in `each'
  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/railties-3.2.22/lib/rails/initializable.rb:54:in `run_initializers'
  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/railties-3.2.22/lib/rails/application.rb:136:in `initialize!'
  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/railties-3.2.22/lib/rails/railtie/configurable.rb:30:in `method_missing'
  /home/app/current/config/environment.rb:5:in `<top (required)>'
  /home/app/current/config.ru:3:in `require'
  /home/app/current/config.ru:3:in `block in <main>'
  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/rack-1.4.7/lib/rack/builder.rb:51:in `instance_eval'
  /var/lib/gems/2.2.0/gems/rack-1.4.7/lib/rack/builder.rb:51:in `initialize'
  /home/app/current/config.ru:1:in `new'
  /home/app/current/config.ru:1:in `<main>'
  /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:107:in `eval'
  /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:107:in `preload_app'
  /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:153:in `<module:App>'
  /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:29:in `<module:PhusionPassenger>'
  /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:28:in `<main>'


[ 2015-10-04 22:41:50.7904 414/7fe8faefc700 age/Cor/Req/CheckoutSession.cpp:252 ]: [Client 1-1] Cannot checkout session because a spawning error occurred. The identifier of the error is e7621c04. Please see earlier logs for details about the error.

My issue is that I'm not even sure what's going wrong - this log is in the apache error log, and the passenger error log (mentioned above) doesn't say anything more. It appears that Passenger is trying to write/open some log file, but which one, and where? Did the directory that it's trying to write to just not get set properly?

Answer 1

The answer here came from NewRelic (sadly hidden in the above thousands of lines). I ended up having to go into that line in logger.rb, manually output some values to /tmp ( ``echo "values #{filename} >> /tmp/foobar.log`` ), and saw that it was trying to write to a directory that was not writeable by the limited rights process apache was/is running in.

Would have been nice to have that output in logger.rb.