There are ways to get this working, on hosts where you can upload files. Two ways are described here, but had some errors, which are now corrected.: https://www.cloud66.com/help/permission_denied_errors
A working example for a deploy hook, using carrierwave for image-upload:
#! /bin/bash
#load environment variables
source /var/.cloud66_env
#assign desired permissions
sudo chmod 0777 -R $RAILS_STACK_PATH/public/uploads
And the best solution
(this way you will don't loose the images when redeploy): use this in your xy_uploader.rb:
def store_dir
"system/#{model.class.to_s.underscore}/#{mounted_as}/#{model.id}"
end