File upload not working with Rails 4 in development using Pow and Nginx

Question

I am using Pow and Nginx to serve my Rails 4 app in development. A simple file upload is returning 500 error and the request is not reaching the Rails controller. I assume this is the case because there is no mention of the request in the Rails log. Without any mention of the error, I am not sure what is going wrong here. I started with an Ajax file upload but replaced it with a simple form which is also not working. Tried this and then went to this Current avatar.html.erb ``` <%= form_for @user, html: { multipart: true }, method: "post", url: '/settings/avatar/update', class: "", id: "update_avatar" do |f| %> <%= f.file_field :avatar, class: 'js-upload-photo-button js-change-avatar-btn', accept: 'image/png,image/gif,image/jpeg,image/jpg' %> <%= f.submit "Upload" %> <% end %> ``` Request headers in Chrome Expanded Request Headers section nginx.log `127.0.0.1 - - [01/Feb/2014:11:28:26 +0530] "POST /settings/avatar/update HTTP/1.1" 500 643 "https://allotrop.dev/settings/avatar" "Mozilla…

Accepted Answer

The problem is not with Rails but with Nginx which is pretty evident from the `nginx error.log`. This question helped me understand what I was dealing with - Rails 3 + carrierwave + nginx = permission denied.

Nginx uses the `client_body_temp_path` directive to specify the location where it will temporarily store the uploaded files from the user request. Homebrew had set it by default to `/usr/local/var/run/nginx`. This folder also contains `fastcgi_temp`, `proxy_temp`, `scgi_temp` and `uwsgi_temp` for me. Nginx worker processes run with user `nobody` and they were not able to access these folders. I chowned all these folders to the `nobody` user, but that did not help.

Finally, I did

`client_body_temp_path /tmp/nginx/;` inside the HTTP module of my `nginx.conf` to make it work.

Doing a `ls -l` shows

`drwx------ 2 nobody wheel 68 Feb 1 14:44 nginx`

I am not sure why this worked inside `/tmp` and not inside the original `/var/run/nginx`. I belive I will face similar issue when I use other temp folders or in production. Will update this thread if and when that happens.

I recommend symlinking the other relevant logs like the nginx access and error log, pow access and app log to the `/log` directory of your Rails app. It helps in looking up errors in one of these when you face a tricky bug.

File upload not working with Rails 4 in development using Pow and Nginx

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