Errno 13 Permission denied: media file in Django – Apache

I am trying to write a file to the django media folder, but on execution I get a permission denied error. The configuration works fine on the OSX development platform, but not on the Ubuntu test server.

I have the following config:

settings.py

    
    MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media/')
    MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
    print('SETTINGS CWD = ', os.getcwd())

models.py methods:

    def template_to_file(self):
        print('MODELS CWD = ', os.getcwd())
        with open(path + '/newsletter-volume-1.html', 'w') as static_file:
            static_file.write('Hello')
    
    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.template_to_file()
        super(Newsletter, self).save(*args, **kwargs)

On the OSX development platform the file writes to the media folder and the Current Working Directory prints are as follows:

SETTINGS CWD = /Users/tb/Documents/dev/backoffice

MODELS CWD = /Users/tb/Documents/dev/backoffice

However, on the Ubuntu platform I get:

[Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/home/admin/backoffice/media/newsletter-volume-1.html’

SETTINGS CWD = /home/admin/backoffice

MODELS CWD = /

The following permissions are set as follows (admin is the owner of Django):

drwxrwxr-x 9 admin admin 4096 Jun 19 09:05 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 admin admin 4096 Jun 19 06:02 ..
drwxrwxr-x 2 admin admin 4096 Jun 19 06:07 media

admin@ubuntu:~/backoffice$ ps aux | grep django
admin      12606  0.4  6.6  82028 62280 ?        S    09:05   0:25 /home/admin/backoffice/venv/bin/python /home/admin/backoffice/venv/bin/celery -A backoffice beat -l INFO --scheduler django_celery_beat.schedulers:DatabaseScheduler
admin      18686  0.0  0.0   7692   684 pts/0    S+   10:35   0:00 grep --color=auto django

Apache runs Django via WSGI

sudo ps aux | grep apache
[sudo] password for admin:
root       13921  0.0  0.5  14188  4924 ?        Ss   09:24   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data   13922  0.1  6.6 407752 61752 ?        Sl   09:24   0:06 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data   13923  0.0  1.2 2008496 12072 ?       Sl   09:24   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data   13924  0.0  1.2 2008480 11844 ?       Sl   09:24   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
admin      20310  0.0  0.0   7692   684 pts/0    S+   10:58   0:00 grep --color=auto apache

I have tried this in shell on the Ubuntu test server and it works fine.

Does anyone have a solution to this and an explanation as to why the Current working directory changes to ‘/’ on the Ubuntu server?