To stop you from the start, there is NO permission issue. /storage is recursively chmodded 777
and whole project folder is chowned by apache:apache
I even renamed the log file to ...-old and apache created a new one... if it didn't have actual write permissions it would not had been allowed to create it.
Running under CentOS release 6.6 (Final)
Deployed the project from git, the homestead works for my colleague.
Full error:
[Mon May 18 10:17:58 2015] [error] [client 86.124.208.14] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'UnexpectedValueException' with message 'The stream or file "/var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/storage/logs/laravel-2015-05-18.log" could not be opened: failed to open stream: Permission denied' in /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/StreamHandler.php:84\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/RotatingFileHandler.php(88): Monolog\Handler\StreamHandler->write(Array)\n#1 /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/AbstractProcessingHandler.php(37): Monolog\Handler\RotatingFileHandler->write(Array)\n#2 /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Logger.php(265): Monolog\Handler\AbstractProcessingHandler->handle(Array)\n#3 /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Logger.php(543): Monolog\Logger->addRecord(400, 'exception 'Symf...', Array)\n#4 /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementl in /var/www/vhosts/mapper.pavementlayers.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/StreamHandler.php on line 84