Running a rails server in production locally (InvalidMessage error) - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm running Ruby 2.5.1 and Rails 5.2.0. I ran rails s -e production, and it gives this error:
/home/roy/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/lib/ruby/gems/2.5.0/gems/activesupport-5.2.0/lib/active_support/message_encryptor.rb:206:in `rescue in_decrypt': ActiveSupport::MessageEncryptor::InvalidMessage
(ActiveSupport::MessageEncryptor::InvalidMessage)
How do I do this properly?
EDIT:
The same error appears whenever I try to edit the credentials file using
EDITOR="nano --wait" bin/rails credentials:edit
Also I realized that I didn't create a production database yet so I tried that using
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:reset
(I know db:reset is a bit redundant but it should work trying to create, migrate and seed a server)
Sadly I get the same kind of error (InvalidMessage error)
Unsupported rails environment for compass
rake aborted!
ActiveSupport::MessageEncryptor::InvalidMessage: ActiveSupport::MessageEncryptor::InvalidMessage
/home/roy/apps/myappname/config/environment.rb:5:in `<main>'
/home/roy/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/bin/bundle:23:in `load'
/home/roy/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/bin/bundle:23:in `<main>'
Caused by:
OpenSSL::Cipher::CipherError:
/home/roy/apps/myappname/config/environment.rb:5:in `<main>'
/home/roy/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/bin/bundle:23:in `load'
/home/roy/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/bin/bundle:23:in `<main>'
Tasks: TOP => db:create => db:load_config => environment

Answer 1

Okay I got it working finally.
I simply deleted my master.key and credentials.yml.enc files and then ran
bin/rails credentials:edit
Which created new files. After that everything worked fine.
I don't really understand why it works though. Can anyone give a good explanation for this?

Answer 2

It appears your solution of removing the master.key and credentials.yml.enc indicates you are running Rails 5.2. This setup changed from a similar encrypted secrets.yml.enc file used in Rails 5.1.
The goal is to allow committing secret keys (AWS, Rails' secrect_key_base) to a project's code repository. These would typically be set with ENV variables. Now collaborators need only share the master.key that was generated to decrypt and modify or read the contents of credentials.yml.enc.
When you removed both the master.key and credentials.yml.enc files, rails generated a new pair, now you were able to decrypt credentials.yml.enc and this file was initialized with a new Rails secret_key_base value needed to avoid the ActiveSupport::MessageEncryptor::InvalidMessage. If you track down the source of that message, it's likely referencing the Rails credentials secret key base: Rails.application.credentials.secret_key_base.
These are nice write ups on the topic:
https://medium.com/cedarcode/rails-5-2-credentials-9b3324851336
https://www.engineyard.com/blog/rails-encrypted-credentials-on-rails-5.2

Answer 3

For Rails 6, I had a multi-environment credentials setup.
One for development, staging, and production.
The master.key works for the main credentials.yml file
The other environments have there own key, so for staging we used the production.key in place of the RAILS_MASTER_KEY config envs on heroku and that fixed it for me.

Answer 4

I had this similar issue when working with a Rails 5 application in production, royketelaar's answer and gib's answer
Just to add a few things:
After deleting the credentials.yml.enc and master.key files,
And running the command below to generate a new secret_key_base, credentials.yml.enc and master.key files (my editor is VS Code and not Nano):
EDITOR="code --wait" bin/rails credentials:edit
Ensure that uncomment the following configuration in your config/environments/production.rb file:
config.require_master_key = true
For your production environment, since the master.key file containing the master key which is used for decrypting the credentials.yml.enc is not recommended to be committed to version system control, save the master key in a RAILS_MASTER_KEY environment variable using the figaro gem.
That's all.
I hope this helps

Answer 5

You need to ask for the master key to you project leader / team leader / coworkers.
With that long key like 63y4gh47373h3733jj474 you copy it and paste it the master.key file under config folder.
That solve the issue.