CouchDB: Not Serving Futon

Question

I've installed CouchDB in Ubuntu 11.10. I have an HTTPD server running (which functions properly) as well as all of the prerequisites for CouchDB.

I've started up CouchDB in the background for a user on the system:

sudo -i -u bpetruk couchdb -b

And it tells me that it's started, and "it's time to relax". Unfortunately, I can't relax just yet -- because even though the server has loaded, I can't access Futon from the standard http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils location.

Here's some error output from the startup routine. Horrible, I know lol. It seems to have just dumped some JSON to the terminal:

Apache CouchDB 1.2.0 (LogLevel=info) is starting. [error] [<0.96.0>] {error_report,<0.31.0>, {<0.96.0>,crash_report, [[{initial_call,{couch_auth_cache,init,['Argument__1']}}, {pid,<0.96.0>}, {registered_name,[]}, {error_info, {exit, {{badmatch,{error,eacces}}, [{couch_auth_cache,ensure_users_db_exists,2}, {couch_auth_cache,open_auth_db,0}, {couch_auth_cache,reinit_cache,1}, {couch_auth_cache,init,1}, {gen_server,init_it,6}, {proc_lib,init_p_do_apply,3}]}, [{gen_server,init_it,6}, {proc_lib,init_p_do_apply,3}]}}, {ancestors, [couch_secondary_services,couch_server_sup,<0.32.0>]}, {messages,[]}, {links,[<0.94.0>,<0.97.0>]}, {dictionary,[]}, {trap_exit,true}, {status,running}, {heap_size,610}, {stack_size,24}, {reductions,227}], [{neighbour, [{pid,<0.97.0>}, {registered_name,[]}, {initial_call,{couch_event_sup,init,['Argument__1']}}, {current_function,{gen_server,loop,6}}, {ancestors, [couch_auth_cache,couch_secondary_services, couch_server_sup,<0.32.0>]}, {messages,[]}, {links,[<0.96.0>,<0.89.0>]}, {dictionary,[]}, {trap_exit,false}, {status,waiting}, {heap_size,233}, {stack_size,9}, {reductions,32}]}]]}} {"init terminating in do_boot",{{badmatch,{error,{bad_return,{{couch_app,start,[normal,["/usr/local/etc/couchdb/default.ini","/usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini"]]},{'EXIT',{{badmatch,{error,shutdown}},[{couch_server_sup,start_server,1},{application_master,start_it_old,4}]}}}}}},[{couch,start,0},{init,start_it,1},{init,start_em,1}]}}

Equally frustrating is the fact that defining the -s flag on couchdb (which is supposed to print the status of the background process) yields absolutely nothing! So I can't provide information in that regard, either.

Are there any common issues I may be blind to in my first foray into the CouchDB world? I'm really stuck on this one!

Answer 1

As suggested by "{{badmatch,{error,eacces}}" in the third line of the error output above, CouchDB was running into some file permissions errors, and couldn't properly write to some file. I wasn't able to determine which file was causing this problem, but taking ownership of the entire CouchDB directory solved the problem.