The current master branch of the appstore-playbooks has a problem.

The first time you run them to provision an entirely "fresh" appstore instance, the appstore does not work. That is, when you visit the appstore using your web browser, you get an "internal server" error.

Sameer has figured out the problem: the "submit_app" directory within the deployed appstore code needs to be write-able by the appstore process.

The appstore playbooks seem to already allow for this, but somehow it is not working as it should.

Here is the current configuration scheme:

When the app store is stood up or later modified, the "ubuntu" user is the owner of all the files, which is correct. Also, the "ubuntu" user gets added to the group "www-data," a "no login" user that owns the appstore process. Further, all directories and files this "www-data" user needs to modify during appstore operation are assigned during setup to group "www-data". Lastly, all the files inside the appstore directory are "chmod'd" to be group-writeable. Thus, the appstore process ought to be able to do what it needs to do.

For this task, please figure out why the configuration is not working as it should. Also, propose a fix that is as lightweight as possible and harmonizes well with updating the appstore post-deployment. That is, a fix that gets it working on first deployment but causes failure later won't work.