Rails - Configuring DNS to host with Heroku (123-reg) - ruby-on-rails
I am trying to figure out how to publish my app on heroku. My DNS is with 123-reg. 123-reg does not provide any support for heroku deployment and vice versa.
I have previously asked this question (voted down and mocked in the comments)
Rails, Heroku - configuring 123-reg domain for heroku
I'm asking again in the hope of finding some substantive help on how to get this working.
Currently, when I try to render the page using my custom domain name, I get an error that says:
This site can’t be reached
www.mydomainname.com ’s server DNS address could not be found.
Try running Network Diagnostics.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
When I try the following in the terminal, I get the responses noted below:
host www.mycustomdomainname.com
Host www.mycustomdomainname.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
host https://www.mycustomdomainname.com
Host https://www.mycustomdomainname.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
dig www.mycustomdomainname.com cname +short
myherokualias.herokudns.com
heroku domains returns the heroku alias both with and without the www prefix.
In my DNS, I have a CNAME record with:
DNS ENTRY TYPE PRIORITY TTL DESTINATION/TARGET
www CNAME mycustomdomainname.herokudns.com.
Apart from that I have MX and TXT records for my email account.
Can anyone see what I need to do to get the page to render using my custom domain name?
When I try:
curl -vI https://www.mycustomdomainname.com
* Rebuilt URL to: https://www.mycustomdomainname.com/
* Could not resolve host: www.mycustomdomainname.com
* Closing connection 0
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: www.mycustomdomainname.com
I'm lost for things to try to get this working
HEROKU SETTINGS
I can see from inspecting my heroku Production Check, that I have the following issues:
FAILED DNS configuration
Your DNS is not configured correctly. Your domain "mycustomdomain.com"'s ALIAS or ANAME record should point to ancient-water-74339.herokuapp.com.
However, it also says:
PASSED Heroku SSL
The Heroku SSL instructions say:
Change your DNS for all domains on your app
Verify your DNS settings by running dig www.yourdomainname.com cname +short. If it returns www.yourdomainname.com.herokudns.com then you have set it up correctly. If you are using an ALIAS or ANAME record, you can verify that based on the DNS provider. For instance, DNSimple will return a TXT record showing how your domain’s ALIAS is set-up.
You should note that it may take up to 24 hours before your DNS is fully propagated globally.
To me, that means I'm supposed to replace the reference to 'herokuapp' with a reference to 'herokudns'. Also, I am reading these instructions to require that I replace 'ancient-water-74339' with a 'mycustomdomainname'.
I have done this (as I understand the instructions) so that the CNAME on my DNS now points to 'mycustomdomainname'.herokudns.com.
The heroku production check says that this is incorrect. Am I supposed to have 2 CNAME records (one using the heroku alias.herokuapp) and another using 'mycustomdomainname'.herokudns?
I tried to use the LetsEncrypt_plugin gem for rails. I cannot verify whether there is an error in that config because that gem does not provide support for heroku.
Can anyone see what I'm supposed to do to get out of this configuration hell?
The heroku production check instructions for DNS with SSL give instructions to provision an SSL Endpoint. The SSL Endpoint instructions say they are only for legacy clients (I don't know what a legacy client is), but that page suggests using the Heroku SSL instead. Those instructions say to use 'herokudns.com' on the end of the app name.
I can't seem to get any combination of these instructions to work.
Checklist
On your DNS provider make sure your CNAME record is properly set:
Host: *
Points To: yourapp.herokussl.com
How to add a CNAME record in 123-reg
On Heroku go to 'Resources' and make sure you have the SSL add-on installed.
On Heroku go to 'Settings/Domains and certificates' and make sure you have your custom domains correctly set:
Domain Name: *.yourdomain.com
DNS Target: yourapp.herokussl.com
Please note the url on herokuapp.com and herokussl.com may differ. If you are using an SSL certificate you'll have to use the latter.
Gotchas
Using the heroku toolbelt make sure your SSL certificate is still trusted
heroku certs:info --app yourapp
Your registrar and your DNS provider may differ, this may lead you to be editing your CNAME records on the incorrect place.
To make sure you are at the right spot perform a whois on your domain:
whois yourdomain.com | grep 'Name Server'
If your domain is actually pointing to 123-reg, the output should be:
Name Server: ns1-123-reg.co.uk
Name Server: ns2-123-reg.co.uk
If the output is something else, then you probably should be setting your CNAME records elsewhere.
Hope this helps <3
After pointing your domain to Heroku app on your Heroku dashboard, go to settings tab and scroll down to custom domain. There click on ADD DOMAIN and add your custom domain.
According to your explanation, the CNAME record is set up correctly for the domain.
Please make sure the domain is added from the Heroku end properly. This guide may help you https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains
Related
How do you install a LetsEncrypt SSL Certificate on Heroku
Since Heroku is read-only and does not allow sudo, what do I need to do to be able to install the LetsEncrypt.org certificate on their server for my app? If I have already set config.force_ssl = true does that matter?
I read the blog post in the first answer here, but I didn't want to pollute my code-base with ACME urls & logic. So I did something similar, but used DNS domain validation ...
With certbot, specify DNS as your preferred challenge:
sudo certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns
After a couple of prompts, certbot will tell you to deply a DNS TXT record to validate your domain:
Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name
_acme-challenge.www.codesy.io with the following value:
CxYdvM...5WvXR0
Once this is deployed,
Press ENTER to continue
Your domain registrar probably has its own docs for deploying a TXT record. Do that, and go back to certbot and press ENTER - Let's Encrypt will check the TXT record, sign the cert, and certbot will save it for you to upload to heroku.
See my own blog post for more detail.
Here are two bash functions that you can use to automate the process for you
function makessl {
sudo certbot certonly --manual --rsa-key-size 4096 --preferred-challenges dns -d ${1}
sudo heroku certs:add --type=sni /etc/letsencrypt/live/${1}/fullchain.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/${1}/privkey.pem
}
function renewssl {
sudo certbot certonly --manual --rsa-key-size 4096 --preferred-challenges dns -d ${1}
sudo heroku certs:update /etc/letsencrypt/live/${1}/fullchain.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/${1}/privkey.pem
}
They take an arguement for the domain name and as long as you run them from within your heroku app folder you will not have to specify an --app NAME
Example: makessl www.domain.com
Example: renewssl www.domain.com
Combine this is #Eric's answer and you're good to go:
heroku certs:auto:enable
FYI, Heroku now offers automated certificate management w/ Let's Encrypt if you run a paid dyno. You can enable it with: heroku certs:auto:enable More info: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/automated-certificate-management
Edit: This answer no longer applies. It was written before Heroku implemented native support for LetsEncrypt. Leaving the rest for posterity, but this is no longer necessary. Use #Eric's answer now. Installing the initial certificate You can use certbot in manual mode to generate the challenge response, modify your site to return that response, then finally complete the certbot manual process. See this blog post by Daniel Morrison, or the linked answer under Certificate Updates below, for more details. Certificate updates As #Flimm mentioned, and as is mentioned in the linked blog post, you'll have to update this every 3 months until Heroku provides better support for LetsEncrypt. You can make that process smoother (no code changes to upload) using an environment variable as described in this answer (Node/Express but the concepts are the same): https://stackoverflow.com/a/40199581/37168 Sabayon There is a GitHub project that can automate all of this for you by setting your Heroku environment variables. It's a tiny webapp you install as another Heroku app that in turn configures your primary app. I haven't tried it yet but am planning to use it instead of updating my cert next time: https://github.com/dmathieu/sabayon
The default recommendation of Heroku is SSL using Server Name Indication (SNI), which is free. Since you already obtained your certificate and key, you can add them by: heroku certs:add <cert>.pem <key>.key If you need to support legacy browser clients which do not support SNI use the Herkou SSL Endpoint addon which costs $20/mo: Add that addon by running heroku addons:create ssl:endpoint And then add your LetsEncrypt.org certificates: heroku certs:add <cert>.pem <key>.key
the best way can be to assign the new ssl domain(that starts with https) to your domain which automatically overrides the non-http domain
I created a certbot plugin that uses the Heroku CLI to automate authentication and installation of Let's Encrypt certificates: https://github.com/gboudreau/certbot-heroku I only have an example that uses the php-nginx Heroku buildpack, but reading that example and finding the equivalent for other buildpacks should be easy enough. Pull Requests are welcome to help others!
Heroku app not found when URL isn't prefixed with www
I have a Rails app hosted on Heroku, and when I don't prefix the domain in the browser with the www, I get a no application found error. Like this, <domain-name>.com causes the error but www..com works fine. How can I remedy this?
Is your application setup to respond to <domain-name>.com? Check with $ heroku domains, do you see *.<domain-name>.com or <domain-name>.com there? Is DNS set to forward that domain to your Heroku app?
Original sub-domain of rails app to Heroku
I would like to set up original domain to Heroku. But I got stuck. Could you help me? What I did is as follows; ①heroku domains:add www.example.com ②DNS setting a www 75.101.163.44 a www 75.101.145.87 a www 174.129.212.2 ③host www.example.com and then I got this. Host www.example.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Heroku suggests not to use naked domains because they're fragile. You need to set up a CNAME domain to Heroku like this: CNAME www your-app-name.herokuapp.com. Remove the A records. Please see the rest of the docs here: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains
Heroku SSL Says Trusted, but redirects to http
Problem: When entering www.domainname.com in the browser, I am redirected to http://my domainname.com and it says that the site is not trusted. I have followed the Heroku docs, but it still fails. I am running Rails 3+ on Heroku Cedar Stack and added the SSL-Endpoint addon, uploaded the certs and private key, and forwarded the CName in the DNS to the NAME.herokussl.com url that was given to me via SSL-Endpoint. After running heroku certs, it says Trusted: true. I have waited 24+ hrs after setting the CNames in Namecheap, but still cannot use the https secure address. Does anyone have a fix?
Adding the following line to my production.rb file fixed the issue for me. #app/config/environments/production.rb config.force_ssl = true
Why isn't my domain pointing to my heroku rails app?
I ran heroku domains:add www.samstil.es and heroku domains:add samstil.es, and my CNAME aliases area of my domain registrar looks like this: registrar http://puu.sh/4Kpib.png Shouldn't I be able to go to http://samstil.es/ right now, and have it show my rails welcome page?
I walked this same path just yesterday and the only way I found to fix this was using the IP number instead of the app.herokuapp.com path. I just triggered a ping samstil-es.herokuapp.com from my terminal and used that IP. Give it a try, hope that helps, worked for me in name.com.