The default place to store attachments is in the filesystem. Files on the local filesystem can be very easily served by Apache without requiring a hit to your app. They also can be processed more easily after they've been saved, as they're just normal files. There are two Filesystem-specific options for has_attached_file:
path: The location of the repository of attachments on disk. This can (and, in almost all cases, should) be coordinated with the value of the url option to allow files to be saved into a place where Apache can serve them without hitting your app. Defaults to ":rails_root/public/:attachment/:id/:style/:basename.:extension" By default this places the files in the app's public directory which can be served directly. If you are using capistrano for deployment, a good idea would be to make a symlink to the capistrano-created system directory from inside your app's public directory. See Paperclip::Attachment#interpolate for more information on variable interpolaton.
:path => "/var/app/attachments/:class/:id/:style/:basename.:extension"
override_file_permissions: This allows you to override the file permissions for files saved by paperclip. If you set this to an explicit octal value (0755, 0644, etc) then that value will be used to set the permissions for an uploaded file. The default is 0666. If you set :override_file_permissions to false, the chmod will be skipped. This allows you to use paperclip on filesystems that don't understand unix file permissions, and has the added benefit of using the storage directories default umask on those that do.
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