The Complete Guide to Rails Performance: basic setup
Article Table of Contents
- Elastic Search
- Docker container, exit code 137
- Elasticsearch…Unauthorized: [401]
- DependencyTest
- download Rubygem’s production DB:
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and start working through the environment setup.
Then… something goes wrong. Next thing you know, you’ve spent two three too many hours debugging random crap, and you’re not even done with the introduction to the dang thing.
Oh, this has never happened to you? Must be nice.
I’m working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance, and I’m thrilled to get learning underway.
I’ve hit a few hiccups, though. I’m not the most sophisticated user out there, so here’s a mess of problems I ran into, and the solutions I did.
Elastic Search #
All of my struggles were with ElasticSearch. I’ve never used it before, so this isn’t surprising.
The RubyGems docs recommend the following:
Install Elastic Search:
- Pull ElasticSearch 5.1.2 :
docker pull docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.1.2- Running Elasticsearch from the command line:
docker run -p 9200:9200 -e "http.host=0.0.0.0" -e "transport.host=127.0.0.1" docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.1.2
Docker container, exit code 137 #
The docker container was instantly exiting with a 137 exit code. That means its out of memory.
I fixed this in the Docker app directly, but just bumping the memory allocated to the containers, and hitting the “save/restart” button.
Now I could run:
bundle exec rake environment elasticsearch:import:all DIR=app/models FORCE=y
Which brought me to:
Elasticsearch…Unauthorized: [401] #
I got
Elasticsearch::Transport::Transport::Errors::Unauthorized: [401]
Sigh. Googled around, no quick solutions.
So, I hunted through the Slack group for the course, and saw someone suggest just brew installing ElasticSearch.
Done.
brew install elasticsearch
It installs 6.5.1 by default. This isn’t the recommended version, but… we’ll carry onward.
I can run elasticsearch in the terminal now, and get a lot of output.
Trying bundle exec rake environment elasticsearch:import:all DIR=app/models FORCE=y again, and we get:
> bundle exec rake environment elasticsearch:import:all DIR=app/models FORCE=y
[IMPORT] Loading models from: app/models
[IMPORT] Processing model: Rubygem...
[IMPORT] Done
Woot!
Lets try the tests.
I’ll start memcached. Since it just hangs, filling up a terminal tab, lets send it to the background:
> memcached &
and:
bundle exec rake
Sweet. Just rows upon rows of sweet green dots…. and a failure.
DependencyTest #
The error is:
Failure:
DependencyTest#test_:
with a Gem::Dependency that refers to a Rubygem that exists and has multiple requirements should create a Dependency referring to the existing Rubygem.
[/Users/joshthompson/workspace/rails_speed/rubygems.org/test/unit/dependency_test.rb:96]:
Expected: "< 1.0.0, >= 0.0.0"
Actual: ">= 0.0.0, < 1.0.0"
We’ll table this for now.
Starting the server works fine. I’ll update this post if I sort out the test failure.
If you elect to work through the course, this might save you a bit of hassle. I went way too far down the docker hole before just brew installing it. :(
download Rubygem’s production DB: #
$ script/load-pg-dump -c -d gemcutter_production latest_dump
No problems.
When it came time to generate the assets, first take failed:
> RAILS_ENV=production rake assets:precompile
rake aborted!
ArgumentError: Missing `secret_key_base` for 'production' environment, set this string with `rails credentials:edit`
Swap it to > RAILS_ENV=production rake assets:precompile SECRET_KEY_BASE=foo and you’re good to go.
Aaaand…
server error on http://localhost:3000/
A message in the slack group suggested using the following for script/load-pg-dump:
script/load-pg-dump -c -d rubygems_production latest_dump
(it’s rubygems_production instead of gemcutter_production)
still failing. same server error.
Taking a look in log/production.log, I’ve got useful errors like:
F, [2018-11-29T21:30:19.469620 #4540] FATAL – : ActionView::Template::Error (PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR: relation “announcements” does not exist
So:
> RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate SECRET_KEY_BASE=foo
but that doesn’t work:
> RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate SECRET_KEY_BASE=foo
== 20090527122639 CreateRubygems: migrating ===================================
-- adapter_name()
-> 0.0000s
-- adapter_name()
-> 0.0000s
-- adapter_name()
-> 0.0000s
-- create_table(:rubygems, {:id=>:integer})
rake aborted!
StandardError: An error has occurred, this and all later migrations canceled:
PG::DuplicateTable: ERROR: relation "rubygems" already exists
: CREATE TABLE "rubygems" ("id" serial NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, "name" character varying, "token" character varying, "user_id" integer, "created_at" timestamp, "updated_at" timestamp)
This is probably a horrible fix, but:
$ psql
# enter psql cli
\l
# list available databases
\c rubygems_production
# connect to said db
\dt
# list all relations
drop table rubygems;
# drop the table
re-run migrations and… it now fails on a different relation.
so, running the mother of all horrible commands:
> RAILS_ENV=production rake db:reset SECRET_KEY_BASE=foo DISABLE_DATABASE_ENVIRONMENT_CHECK=1
nukes the production DB, redoes everything. Don’t do this.
RAILS_ENV=production SECRET_KEY_BASE=foo rails s
works, now, but the production DB is empty, so we have to re-import it:
script/load-pg-dump -c -d rubygems_production latest_dump
after a few minutes… boot up the rails server again, and:
damnit. error page. Same complaint about missing relation.
When I swap everything out to working on development environment instead of production, it works. I’ll carry on from here for now.
I asked for a bit of help in the Slack group for the program, and got great help.
Turns out I just needed to do a bundle exec rake db:create RAILS_ENV=production, then re-run the script: script/load-pg-dump -c -d rubygems_production latest_dump
Now I can run the app in production:
RAILS_ENV=production SECRET_KEY_BASE=foo rails s