The real first run of this play did not fail on a transition. The journal shows
the entrypoint dying on every attempt:
nextcloud[302063]: => Configuring PHP session handler...
nextcloud[302063]: /entrypoint.sh: 121: cannot create
/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/redis-session.ini: Permission denied
With REDIS_HOST set, the entrypoint generates PHP's session-handler config on
every start, and the target directory belongs to the image's root: the php base
image does `mkdir -p "$PHP_INI_DIR/conf.d"` with no chown. The uid this container
runs as has no write bit on it, the entrypoint exits 2 before Apache is reached,
Restart=always retries that, and systemd's start limit turns it into a `failed`
unit. Nothing in that shape says "permissions": the symptom is a unit state and a
message that only exists in journalctl.
The container now mounts a host-owned file over that exact path. A bind-mounted
file replaces the directory entry, so the directory's ownership stops mattering
and the write lands on podman_user. The role templates the five lines the
entrypoint would have written, so a refused write is no longer fatal either --
PHP still gets Redis sessions instead of a crash loop.
This also corrects a reading of the previous run that this play got wrong and
documented wrongly: `activating` is not evidence of a healthy start. A
crash-looping container spends its time `activating` between restarts, so the
earlier "reports a healthy start as a failure" comment and commit message were
describing a start that was in fact failing. The wait is still right -- it stops
promptly at a terminal state and hands over to a rescue that has the logs -- but
its comment now says what it actually buys.
Apache's own runtime directories need none of this, and the php base image is why:
it chowns /var/run/apache2, /var/lock/apache2 and /var/log/apache2 to www-data and
chmods them 1777, so only the session file was ever going to bite. The readme
gains a section on it, the diagnostic commands the play now collects, and a note
that the uid mapping is not to be derived from a `docker exec id -u` of 0.
tanshu
1038037e45