Passenger Depends on Shell $HOME

[sean-horn]

Passenger depends on shell $HOME variable being set.

While chef-client is running in daemonized mode, the children spawned by chef-client do not include $HOME as part of the available shell environment.

As a customer, I would like a workaround for this issue chef-boneyard/chef-client#226 to be made in passenger_apache2 if it can be done sooner than in the chef-client cookbook.

[sean-horn]

Is there a better workaround than setting this at some point in a recipe before passenger_apache2 runs?

ENV['HOME'] = '/somewhere'

[jtimberman]

What actually uses $HOME? Why does it need to be set? At what point in the run is it using $HOME?

[jtimberman]

There are some locations in the passenger codebase itself that use HOME, which appears for automatic config file location lookups, especially when using RVM.

vagrant@default-ubuntu-1204:/opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/passenger-4.0.53$ grep -Rl 'HOME' *
build/packaging.rb
buildout/agents/PassengerLoggingAgent.o
buildout/agents/PassengerHelperAgent
buildout/agents/PassengerHelperAgent.o
buildout/agents/PassengerLoggingAgent
CHANGELOG
dev/ci/run_travis.sh
doc/Users guide Standalone.html
doc/users_guide_snippets/troubleshooting/default.txt
ext/libev/configure
ext/libeio/configure
ext/common/ApplicationPool2/Spawner.h
ext/common/agents/HelperAgent/Main.cpp
ext/common/agents/LoggingAgent/Main.cpp
lib/phusion_passenger.rb
lib/phusion_passenger/platform_info/ruby.rb
lib/phusion_passenger/plugin.rb
lib/phusion_passenger/packaging.rb
packaging/rpm/image/site-defaults.cfg
packaging/rpm/internal/my_init
packaging/rpm/internal/setuser

I don't think this is a cookbook specific issue. If we were to do anything it would be to explicitly set ENV['HOME'] if it's undefined, e.g.,

ENV['HOME'] = Etc.getpwuid(Process.uid).dir unless ENV.has_key?('HOME')

(this is the same thing that passenger itself does in a few places)

However, this feels like it could be problematic. As I said, it's not clear to me why this is an issue with passenger, and it appears to be difficult or inconsistent to reproduce. I think it's potentially a really bad idea to manipulate the shell environment variables in a community cookbook, as that can have unintended side effects.

Similarly, I don't think that munging it in the chef-client cookbook's startup scripts a la issue chef-boneyard/chef-client#226 is a good idea either. Maybe noting that the environment is clean/scrubbed on startup? Maybe I take it for granted that the ENV for init services is scrubbed/clean.

[sean-horn]

I think this might be helpful for folks just coming into passenger_apache2 and running it as a service under init: #44
@jtimberman

[cheeseplus]

Closing this as the workaround provided seems sufficient.

[lock]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.