Merge pull request 'blog: Gitea 1.15 and up: path not found or permission denied' (#32) from dachary/website:wip-blog-05-28 into master

Reviewed-on: https://gitea.hostea.org/Hostea/website/pulls/32

content/blog/2022-05-28-path-not-found.md

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
++++
+title = "[solved] Gitea 1.15 and up: path not found or permission denied"
+date = 2022-05-28
+description = "After migrating from 1.15 or earlier to gitea 1.16 paths are no longer found and files cannot be created because of permission problems because the default example.ini file changed."
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ['hostea', 'gitea', 'upgrade', 'troubleshoot', 'problem']
+
+[extra]
+author = 'dachary'
++++
+
+In Gitea 1.15 the [app.example.ini](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/cfb4c23a5009b9c236d48ac0bc156577c7d70741/custom/conf/app.example.ini) file was changed to [comment out most of the values](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/commit/4a84022d2559ccfc99960c7c654ee8b9b38664f7). The assumption was that all values exactly matched the defaults [in the source code](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/modules/setting/setting.go). However, there are differences, for instance for [APP_DATA_PATH](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/cfb4c23a5009b9c236d48ac0bc156577c7d70741/modules/setting/setting.go#L771). Before Gitea 1.15, `app.example.ini` contained:
+
+```
+APP_DATA_PATH = data
+```
+
+and the path was relative to the **directory from which the Gitea server was running**. In Gitea 1.15 up to 1.16, it was commented out:
+
+```
+; APP_DATA_PATH = data
+```
+
+and the path was relative to the **work path directory**, as provided either via the --work-path argument or the `GITEA_WORK_DIR` environment variable. 
+
+When a distribution such as voidlinux [uses app.example.ini](https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcpkgs/gitea/patches/config.patch) as a base for the Gitea package, this change indirectly creates a regression and an upgrade of Gitea [fails with errors](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/19367) such as `unable to open level db at data/data/queues/common: mkdir data: permission denied`. The regression did not show as soon as Gitea 1.15 became available in voidlinux because the package [explicitly set `APP_DATA_PATH`](https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/7fc9190f0e0d557dd5031e68df4e183892d4315b/srcpkgs/gitea/patches/config.patch#L62). But this [changed when Gitea 1.15.6 was packaged](https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/commit/19d986a2cae9ce73d32552ddb62443b5e7fa13e2) and once the value was commented out, upgrading triggered the problem. This was worked around six month later with the [Gitea 1.16.8](https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/commit/44b6c96fa12ce9d993c7a2ac9486d892735b7e3a) package.
+
+The `APP_DATA_PATH` directory is not the only one, the `[log] ROOT_PATH` is another example. There is an [ongoing effort](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/19815) to improve the situation in Gitea 1.17. With the downside of introducing breaking changes that will have an impact on all Gitea installations because the content of the `app.ini` file will be interpreted differently. In the case of `APP_DATA_PATH`, both:
+
+```
+APP_DATA_PATH = data
+```
+
+and:
+
+```
+; APP_DATA_PATH = data
+```
+
+will be interpreted to be relative to the **work path directory**, as provided either via the --work-path argument or the `GITEA_WORK_DIR` environment variable. Every Gitea installation using **APP_DATA_PATH = data** will need to update the value to be an absolute path such as **/var/lib/gitea/data** so that it keeps pointing to the expected directory.
+
+In order to prepare for the change or ensure the consistency of all path, there fortunately is a very simple **solution: always use absolute paths in the `app.ini` configuration file**.