Once a rails 4 application is set up correctly on amazons elastic beanstalk, there is nothing easier than updating this application. But for me there was a bit of trouble to get things starting. Maybe this article is useful for you too.
Note: This walkthrough is based on Elastic Beanstalk Command Line Interface 2.6. In October 2014 Amazon released a new version (3.x) which is slightly different. However, basic steps and requirements for setting up the rails application are still the same.
EB Setup
First at all, I found this guide from amazon on how to deploy a rails application.
This was quite useful. Setting up the main part was straightforward - I mainly used the suggestions from amazons guide. You should do the same, but for your information here are my parameters that I used from the eb wizard:
Keys
$ eb init
To get your AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key,
visit "https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/securityCredentials".
Enter your AWS Access Key ID : ...
Enter your AWS Secret Access Key : ...
Enter your keys. Use credentials for a role with sufficient permissions
Region
Select an AWS Elastic Beanstalk service region (current value is "EU West (Ireland)").
Available service regions are:
1) US East (Virginia)
2) US West (Oregon)
3) US West (North California)
4) EU West (Ireland)
5) Asia Pacific (Singapore)
6) Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
7) Asia Pacific (Sydney)
8) South America (Sao Paulo)
I chose 4 for Ireland, because I live in Germany
Application name
Select (1 to 8):
Enter an AWS Elastic Beanstalk application name (current value is "myapp"):
Enter an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment name (current value is "myapp-env"):
Name it whatever you like and press enter.
Tier
Select an environment tier (current value is "WebServer::Standard::1.0").
Available environment tiers are:
1) WebServer::Standard::1.0
2) Worker::SQS/HTTP::1.0
Select (1 to 2):
I chose 1
The server stack
Select a solution stack (current value is "64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Ruby 2.0 (Passenger Standalone)").
Available solution stacks are:
1) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running PHP 5.5
2) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running PHP 5.4
3) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running PHP 5.5
4) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running PHP 5.4
5) 32bit Amazon Linux running PHP 5.3
6) 64bit Amazon Linux running PHP 5.3
7) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Node.js
8) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Node.js
9) 64bit Windows Server 2008 R2 running IIS 7.5
10) 64bit Windows Server 2012 running IIS 8
11) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Tomcat 7 Java 7
12) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Tomcat 7 Java 6
13) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Tomcat 7 Java 7
14) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Tomcat 7 Java 6
15) 32bit Amazon Linux running Tomcat 7
16) 64bit Amazon Linux running Tomcat 7
17) 32bit Amazon Linux running Tomcat 6
18) 64bit Amazon Linux running Tomcat 6
19) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Python 2.7
20) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Python 2.7
21) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Python
22) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Python
23) 32bit Amazon Linux running Python
24) 64bit Amazon Linux running Python
25) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.4 running Ruby 2.0 (Puma)
26) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Ruby 2.0 (Puma)
27) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.2 running Ruby 2.0 (Puma)
28) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Ruby 2.0 (Passenger Standalone)
29) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.2 running Ruby 2.0 (Passenger Standalone)
30) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Ruby 1.9.3
31) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.3 running Ruby 1.9.3
32) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.2 running Ruby 1.9.3
33) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.2 running Ruby 1.9.3
34) 32bit Amazon Linux 2014.02 v1.0.1 running Ruby 1.8.7
35) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.02 v1.0.1 running Ruby 1.8.7
36) 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.03 v1.0.5 running Docker 0.9.0
Select (1 to 36):
I decided to use 28 because I am already familiar with Passenger. No big deal here if you decided someting different, just make sure it´s a ruby server with ruby > 1.9
Environment type
Select an environment type (current value is "SingleInstance").
Available environment types are:
1) LoadBalanced
2) SingleInstance
Select (1 to 2):
I kept it simple and picked 2
RDS Database
Create an RDS DB Instance? [y/n] (current value is "Yes"):
Of course we want a database, so the answer is y
Snapshot
Create an RDS BD Instance from (current value is "[No snapshot]"):
1) [No snapshot]
2) ...
3) ...
4) [Other snapshot]
Select (1 to 4):
Starting from beginning means we want a clean database - therefore no snapshot is required -> Pick 1.
RDS master db
Enter an RDS DB master password (current value is "******"):
Pick a password. Don´t be too fancy, my first pw had a lot of special chars. The caused the RDS creation to fail. So I suggest using a long one but only with lowercase, uppercase and numbers.
Snapshots
If you terminate your environment, your RDS DB Instance will be deleted and you will lose your data.
Create snapshot? [y/n] (current value is "Yes"):
If you not want to lose your data after your server has been terminated, you better choose y
Instance profile
Attach an instance profile (current value is "aws-elasticbeanstalk-ec2-role"):
1) [Create a default instance profile]
2) aws-elasticbeanstalk-ec2-role
3) [Other instance profile]
Select (1 to 3):
Let AWS do the work and pick 1
Deploy Application to AWS
If you followed the remaining steps from the AWS guide
- Including adding the mysql2 gem and changing the production environment to use the ENV placeholders, you are ready to go.
Start your application using eb start. EB is now setting up the environment that you have specified in the wizard with eb init. No matters, it should take a while.
Once it´s finished, type eb status to see whats going on with your app
$ eb status
URL : myapp-env-XXX.elasticbeanstalk.com
Status : Ready
Health : Green
RDS Database: AWSEBRDSDatabase | XXX.XXX.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306
Go to the URL displayed in the first line, and check out your app.
Problems
For me - unfortunately - it didn´t work so well at the first try. I got a passenger error alert as i visited the URL (Sorry, don´t remember the exact wording of that message).
But what I´ve done is following:
- Go to AWS console
- Create new key pairs the access the ec2 server: Services > EC2 > NETWORK & SECURITY > Key Pairs
- Assign the new key-pair to your EB application: Services > Elastic Beanstalk > myapp > Configuration > Settings-Icon on Card Instances > Select it from Selectbox "EC2 key pair" > Save
Now I was able to login to the machine via SSH.
The logs for my app are stored under /var/app/support/logs. A quick look into passenger.log reveled following stacktrace:
[ 2014-06-14 16:18:29.6415 5140/7f14c66a6700 agents/HelperAgent/RequestHandler.h:2210 ]: [Client 20] Cannot checkout session.
Error page:
Did not recognize your adapter specification (cannot load such file -- json/ext/parser). (MultiJson::AdapterError)
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:247:in `require'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:247:in `block in require'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:232:in `load_dependency'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:247:in `require'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/json-1.8.1/lib/json/ext.rb:13:in `<module:Ext>'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/json-1.8.1/lib/json/ext.rb:12:in `<module:JSON>'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/json-1.8.1/lib/json/ext.rb:9:in `<top (required)>'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:247:in `require'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:247:in `block in require'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:232:in `load_dependency'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:247:in `require'
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/multi_json-1.10.1/lib/multi_json/adapters/json_gem.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'
So there seemed to be a problem with the multi_json gem on my machine.
I found a solution on stackoverflow. I don´t exactly know what is causing the error here, but downgrading the gem worked well for me. If someone knows why, please add a comment at the end of this article!
Update Gemfile:
gem 'multi_json', '1.7.8'
And update gem via commandline:
$ bundle update multi_json
Commit the new changes, and push it:
git add .
git commit -m "Downgrade multi_json gem due to eb problems"
git aws.push
After everything was pushed to AWS, I discovered the next error message: Bad Gateway. Another look into passenger.log revealed the problem:
App 12345 stderr: [ 2014-06-14 16:34:02.8529 24395/0x000000013dfee0(Worker 1) utils.rb:68 ]: *** Exception RuntimeError in Rack application object (Missing `secret_key_base` for 'production' environment, set this value in `config/secrets.yml`) (process 24395, thread 0x000000013dfee0(Worker 1)):
Ok, because the secretkeybase should not be set in the config for production environment directly, it has to be passed with an ENV variable.
So what we have to do is create a new secret with the commandline:
$ bundle exec rake secret
c2f86d0c1...00d67f
Copy the secret and add it to the configuration of your App by browsing to the AWS console: Services > Elastic Beanstalk > myapp > Configuration > Settings-Icon on Card 'Software Configuration' > Scroll down and enter a new key-value pair into the blank fields:
left field: SECRET_KEY_BASE, right field: c2f86d0c1...00d67f (your key from above)
Save!
After the application has been updated, everything worked well for me. Hope it does the same for you!