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Cache Permissions

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Our app is a big 500 error because Symfony can't write to its cache directory.

This is an easy fix... well mostly. Let's start with the easy part: if we 777 the var/ directory, we should be good.

Add a new task at the end: "Fix var directory permissions":

163 lines | ansible/playbook.yml
---
- hosts: vb
// ... lines 3 - 9
tasks:
// ... lines 11 - 143
- name: Fix var directory permissions
// ... lines 145 - 163

To refer to the var/ directory, I'll create another variable: symfony_var_dir set to {{ symfony_root_dir }}/var:

163 lines | ansible/playbook.yml
---
- hosts: vb
vars:
// ... line 5
symfony_root_dir: /var/www/project
// ... line 7
symfony_var_dir: "{{ symfony_root_dir }}/var"
// ... lines 9 - 163

Back at the bottom, use the file module, set the path to the new variable, and state to directory:

163 lines | ansible/playbook.yml
---
- hosts: vb
// ... lines 3 - 9
tasks:
// ... lines 11 - 143
- name: Fix var directory permissions
file:
path: "{{ symfony_var_dir }}"
state: directory
// ... lines 148 - 163

That'll create the directory if it doesn't exist, but, it should. Then, they key part: mode: 0777 and recurse: yes:

163 lines | ansible/playbook.yml
---
- hosts: vb
// ... lines 3 - 9
tasks:
// ... lines 11 - 143
- name: Fix var directory permissions
file:
path: "{{ symfony_var_dir }}"
state: directory
mode: 0777
recurse: yes
// ... lines 150 - 163

Tip

If you're going to 777 your var/ directory, make sure that you've uncommented the umask calls in app.php, app_dev.php and bin/console:

26 lines | web/app.php
<?php
// ... lines 2 - 4
// If you don't want to setup permissions the proper way, just uncomment the following PHP line
// read http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/installation.html#checking-symfony-application-configuration-and-setup
// for more information
umask(0000);
// ... lines 9 - 26

33 lines | web/app_dev.php
<?php
// ... lines 2 - 5
// If you don't want to setup permissions the proper way, just uncomment the following PHP line
// read http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/installation.html#checking-symfony-application-configuration-and-setup
// for more information
umask(0000);
// ... lines 10 - 33

30 lines | bin/console
#!/usr/bin/env php
// ... lines 3 - 7
// if you don't want to setup permissions the proper way, just uncomment the following PHP line
// read http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/installation.html#configuration-and-setup for more information
umask(0000);
// ... lines 11 - 30

You can see this in the finished code download.

Ok, run the playbook!

ansible-playbook ansible/playbook.yml -i ansible/hosts.ini

By the way, needing to re-run the entire playbook after a tiny change is annoying! We'll learn a trick in a minute to help with this.

Done! Ok, switch back to your browser and try it. Woohoo! A working Symfony project... not our project yet, but still, winning! We'll use our real project next.

Fixing Permissions... in a more Secure Way?

Setting the directory permissions to 777 is easy... and perfectly fine for a development machine. But if this were a production machine, well, 777 isn't ideal... though honestly, a lot of people do this.

What's better? In a few minutes, we'll add a task to clear and warm up Symfony's cache. On a production machine, after you've done that, you can set the var/cache permissions back to be non-writeable, so 555. In theory, that should just work! But in practice, you'll probably need to tweak a few other settings to use non-filesystem cache - like making annotations cache in APC.

But, that's more about deployment - which we'll save for a different course!