dokku/docs/troubleshooting.md

Troubleshooting

Symptom: I deployed my app but I am getting the default nginx page

Solution:

Most of the time it's caused by some defaults newer versions of nginx set. To make sure that's the issue you're having run the following:

root@dockerapps:/home/git# nginx
nginx: [emerg] could not build the server_names_hash, you should increase server_names_hash_bucket_size: 32

If you get a similar error just edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and add the following line to your http section:

http {
    (... existing content ...)
    server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
    (...)
}

Note that the server_names_hash_bucket_size setting defines the maximum domain name length. A value of 64 would allow domains with up to 46 characters. Set it to 128 if you need longer ones.

Save the file and try stopping nginx and starting it again:

root@dockerapps:~/dokku/buildstep# /etc/init.d/nginx stop
 * Stopping nginx nginx                                        [ OK ]
root@dockerapps:~/dokku/buildstep# /etc/init.d/nginx start
 * Starting nginx nginx                                        [ OK ]

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Symptom: I want to deploy my app, but while pushing I get the following error

! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined)

Solution:

The remote rejected error does not give enough information. Anything could have failed.

Create a /home/dokku/dokkurc file containing the following :

export DOKKU_TRACE=1

This will trace all of dokku's activity. If this does not help you create a pastebin or a gist containing the full log, and create an issue.

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Symptom: I want to deploy my app but I am getting asked for the password of the git user and the error message

fatal: 'NAME' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Solution:

You get asked for a password because your ssh secret key can't be found. This may happen if the private key corresponding to the public key you added with sshcommand acl-add is not located in the default location ~/.ssh/id_rsa.

You have to point ssh to the correct secret key for your domain name. Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config:

Host DOKKU_HOSTNAME
  IdentityFile "~/.ssh/KEYNAME"

Also see issue #116

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Symptom: I want to deploy my nodejs app on dokku and use a postinstall script within the package.json but I keep getting this error:

npm WARN cannot run in wd app@1.0.0 echo blah (wd=/build/app)

Solution:

This is a permissions problem as dokku (buildstep) uses a root account for running the application. (This may change please see this thread: https://github.com/progrium/buildstep/pull/42).

To allow npm to work as root account one must set the configuration option of unsafe-perm to true. There are many ways to set this configuration option but the one I've found works most consistently with the heroku-nodejs-buildpack is as a .npmrc file. The file should contain

unsafe-perm = true

Note that this is NOT required on heroku as heroku does not use a root account for running the application.

Please see https://github.com/progrium/dokku/issues/420 and https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs/issues/92.

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Symptom: I successfully deployed my application with no deployment errors and receiving Bad Gateway when attempting to access application

Solution:

In many cases the application will require the a process.env.PORT port opposed to a specified port.

When specifying your port you may want to use something similar to:

var port = process.env.PORT || 3000

Please see https://github.com/progrium/dokku/issues/282