Greeting! Let’s deploy playframework using Boxfuse

Getting Started

  • Visit the Boxfuse website.
  • Login with your GitHub account.
  • Connect your AWS account and give permission for using json.
  • Make sure you select the correct AWS region.
  • Download the personalized Boxfuse client.
  • Place it in root directory and add it to env variable.
  • In my case, I placed it inside ~/go/installation/amd/go/boxfuse/.
  • To add boxfuse to env variables I used:
    export GOROOT=/Users/<username>/go/installation/amd/go
export GOPATH=/Users/<username>/go
export GOBIN=$GOPATH/bin
export GO111MODULE=on
export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$GOROOT/bin:$PATH
  • Now, you can check if it is installed properly usingboxfuse -v.
  • Then, navigate to the Play project and create a distribution image using sbt dist. It should show something like this:
    [info] Main Scala API documentation successful.
[warn] there were two feature warnings; re-run with -feature for details
[warn] 67 warnings found
[success] All package validations passed
[info] Your package is ready in /Project/directory/target/universal/<Project_Name>-1.0.zip
[success] Total time: 154 s (02:34), completed 27-Oct-2021, 3:16:15 PM
  • Now, run dist image with Boxfuse usingboxfuse run -env=test (Note: it will run on AWS).
  • Define all required env variables in the boxfuse.conf file located in Boxfuse installation directory as below:
    envvars.myvar=myvalue
envvars.otherone=Something Else
  • Or to pass env variables from terminal, use this: boxfuse run -env=test envvars.SERVER_PORT=26657 envvars.PLAY_HTTP_SECRET="YOUR_PLAY_SECRET" -capacity=1:t2.micro
  • -capacity=1:t2.micro is used to define the number of instances and types of instances to deploy.
  • For more configuration, check /conf/boxfuse.conf(Note: by default, it shows all the logs in the console).

Errors & Fixes:

  1. Unable to create RDS DB instance ERROR: Running
  • WARNING: Run failed: Unable to create RDS DB instance
  • ERROR: Running 0xankit/<Project_Name>:0.0.0.1635328070074 failed!
  • [FIXED] Change db.t2.micro to db.t3.micro from boxfuse dashboard by clicking on scale and then try again.
  1. Unable to start VirtualBox instance boxfuse-dev-hdd-2016.02.09_0xankit-<Project_Name> ERROR: Unable to start VirtualBox instance boxfuse-dev-hdd-2016.02.09_0xankit-<Project_Name>
  • ensure VirtualBox is working correctly
  • ensure hardware virtualization (VT-x or AMD-V) is enabled on your machine and check by running “/usr/local/bin/VBoxManage list hostinfo” [FIXED] Define -env=test
  1. JVM exited with status 255
"  play.core.server.ProdServerStart
i-0cd1a2fa4e0bcc642 => 2021-10-28 11:08:56.147 JVM exited with status 255
i-0cd1a2fa4e0bcc642 => 2021-10-28 11:08:56.147 Rebooting in 15 seconds ...

[FIXED] Define logs.filter.level=TRACE to see exact error.

  1. Postgres root certificate error: Could not open SSL root certificate file. ERROR: shell i-0a5d6b28fb9d1c587 => 2021-10-29 12:24:43.512 Caused by: org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: Could not open SSL root certificate file //.postgresql/root.crt. [FIXED] Define slick.dbs.default.db.properties.sslfactory="org.postgresql.ssl.NonValidatingFactory" in application.conf

  2. For Timeout error [FIXED] Define slick.dbs.default.db.connectionTimeout=15s in application.conf

  3. Evolutions couldn’t be applied [FIXED] Define play.evolutions.autoApply=true in application.conf

  4. Could’t write permission’ issue [FIXED] Define play.server.pidfile.path=/dev/null in application.conf And with that, you’ve crossed another level to becoming a boss coder. GG! 👏

I hope you found this article instructional and informative. If you have any feedback or queries, please let me know in the comments below. And follow me on twitter!