Nasty bug with binary files, Rails and erb.rb – how to fix it

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Tags: bugs English Geeky rails
Categories: English Geeky

OK, so I happily hack away on my  Rails application on a Debian box with Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.1.0, and then deploy to a Fedora 8 server with Ruby 1.8.6 and Rails 2.2.2. All of a sudden a particular release causes Passenger to spit an error page on application startup. The key error was:

undefined method \`empty?’ for nil:NilClass

Now I’m combing all over my code to find where I’m using “empty?” but I’m sure it’s somewhere that gets run on application startup, otherwise it wouldn’t show up when Passenger tries to start the application. But I find nothing and I’m about to shoot myself.

Following the trace I end up hacking Ruby’s erb.rb file, as there appear to be some bugs in this; indeed, this one from 1.8.6 is different from what I have in 1.8.7, so the app runs fine here. I try to fix instances where empty? might get called on a nil object, but after fixing 3 of these the app stops responding altogether. Hmm, so something, somewhere, depends on erb.rb’s buggy behavior. Best to leave it alone.

HOWEVER, on the deployment server, running with script/server works fine; it’s only when using Passenger that things blow up.

Finally I find this thread that points me in the right direction:

One of the users dropped some
JPEG files into the /app/views/static directory, and that seems to be
jamming up the works with 2.2.2.

Indeed, as part of my last set of revisions, I’d left several samples of static content I was converting into dynamically generated pages; sure enough, they included JPGs and whatnot. Just to be safe, I decided to move the entire directory into public to avoid any problems.

Now the app runs just peachy and I only wasted 2 hours chasing down this bug. Thanks to the guys at Nabble!

Eventually it all boils down to this Rails bug reported at Lighthouse. So hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. In the meanwhile, keep binary files out of your views subtree.

I’m attaching the entire Passenger error page, in case it’s useful to anyone. Mainly so that Google can find it faster for other people with this problem.

Ruby on Rails application could not be started

These are the possible causes:

  • There may be a syntax error in the application’s code. Please check for such errors and fix them.
  • A required library may not installed. Please install all libraries that this application requires.
  • The application may not be properly configured. Please check whether all configuration files are written correctly, fix any incorrect configurations, and restart this application.
  • A service that the application relies on (such as the database server or the Ferret search engine server) may not have been started. Please start that service.

Further information about the error may have been written to the application’s log file. Please check it in order to analyse the problem.

Error message:
undefined method `empty?’ for nil:NilClass
Exception class:
NoMethodError
Application root:
/var/www/spcccdec/releases/20090227005857
Backtrace:
# File Line Location
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/erb.rb 478 in `scan’
1 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/erb.rb 524 in `compile’
2 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/erb.rb 691 in `initialize’
3 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/template_handlers/erb.rb 51 in `new’
4 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/template_handlers/erb.rb 51 in `compile’
5 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/template_handler.rb 11 in `call’
6 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/renderable.rb 21 in `_unmemoized_compiled_source’
7 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/memoizable.rb 57 in `compiled_source’
8 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/memoizable.rb 25 in `__send__’
9 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/memoizable.rb 25 in `memoize_all’
10 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/memoizable.rb 22 in `each’
11 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/memoizable.rb 22 in `memoize_all’
12 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/memoizable.rb 17 in `freeze’
13 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 88 in `reload!’
14 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 102 in `templates_in_path’
15 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 100 in `each’
16 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 100 in `templates_in_path’
17 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 86 in `reload!’
18 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 78 in `load’
19 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 109 in `load’
20 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 109 in `each’
21 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.2.2/lib/action_view/paths.rb 109 in `load’
22 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.2.2/lib/initializer.rb 357 in `load_view_paths’
23 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.2.2/lib/initializer.rb 182 in `process’
24 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.2.2/lib/initializer.rb 112 in `send’
25 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.2.2/lib/initializer.rb 112 in `run’
26 ./config/environment.rb 13
27 /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb 31 in `gem_original_require’
28 /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb 31 in `require’
29 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb 254 in `preload_application’
30 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb 214 in `initialize_server’
31 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/utils.rb 179 in `report_app_init_status’
32 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb 203 in `initialize_server’
33 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 166 in `start_synchronously’
34 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 135 in `start’
35 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 112 in `fork’
36 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 112 in `start’
37 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb 179 in `start’
38 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/spawn_manager.rb 222 in `spawn_rails_application’
39 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/spawn_manager.rb 217 in `synchronize’
40 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/spawn_manager.rb 217 in `spawn_rails_application’
41 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/spawn_manager.rb 126 in `spawn_application’
42 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/spawn_manager.rb 251 in `handle_spawn_application’
43 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 317 in `__send__’
44 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 317 in `main_loop’
45 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/lib/passenger/abstract_server.rb 168 in `start_synchronously’
46 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/bin/passenger-spawn-server 46