Environmental variables in /etc/environment are not accessible by rails - ruby-on-rails

I have been trying to deploy a rails project and it requires some environmental variables so I did some research and it turns out the best place to add them is inside /etc/environment which i did so and then sourced the file.
I now can get/access the environmental variables by running echo $variablename; however the rails application can still not see these environmental variables?

/etc/environment is not automatically sourced by all shells in all login contexts. To get the settings into the rails environment, there are a couple options. The easiest is probably to modify (or create) the .bashrc (assuming the rails user's shell is bash, which is the Ubuntu default shell) in the home directory of the user rails runs as and add the following line:
source /etc/environment
If you want the variables to be available to all users on the system, you can create a file called /etc/profile.d/environment.sh (or something similar) and add the above line to that.
For either solution, log in again as the rails user and verify the environment.

You might want to use this gem for env variables:
https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv

Related

how to add environment variable in linux for rails app?

i need to set an environment variable for the rails app to use
SECRET_KEY_BASE=9941144eb255ff0ffecasdlkjqweqwelkjasdlkjasd
the config settings for production is as shown below
# Do not keep production secrets in the repository,
# instead read values from the environment.
production:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
how can i set the environment variable using the linux command
export VARNAME="my value"
I tried to set the variable but looks like it needs to be for the right user. Sorry i am not an expert in linux.
I appreciate any help! Thanks!
export VARNAME="my value"
Well the above works for your current terminal session. After this command, all the subsequent commands can access this variable. Try running this:
echo $VARNAME
It will print the value my value in the console. If you want this behaviour to be persisted, you need to place the export command in your OS' config file (~/.bashrc in case of Ubuntu).
After editing this file, either restart your terminal, or run this:
source ~/.bashrc
This will reload the file in your current terminal session. Alternatively, you can try running your Rails server (or a rake command) as follows:
VARNAME="my value" rails s
For your local development I suggest you to use dotenv (https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv) or figaro (https://github.com/laserlemon/figaro) and follow the README you find in the gem itself. This gives you much more flexibility than using directly environment variables because you set them only for this specific project and each project can have different of them.
You need to have either a .env file or a application.yml file where you will define your environment variables.
Remember to not commit or push this file to your repository because it contains sensible information!
When you will deploy to production you can use real environment variables or use admin panel control (on Heroku for example)

How to set up and use Rails environment variables in production server?

I need to set up an environment variable for my rails app. Both in my local machine and in the production server. I read some tutorials on the internet but NONE has given the complete instruction on how to set and use these variable in the actual production server. I use digital ocean and linux server to host my rails app.
I have spent days trying to figure this out, but still haven't found a clear and complete instruction from setting the variables on my local machine -> push it to git repo -> set and use the variables in production server. So, hope somebody can help me here, thanks!
UPDATE:
This is how I currently setup the environment variables in my rails app by using figoro gem:
You can set system-wide environment variables in the /etc/rc.local file (which is executed when the system boots). If your Rails app is the sole user of the Linux system, that is a good place to store credentials such as API keys because there is no risk of including this file in a public Git repository, as it is outside the application directory. The secrets will only be vulnerable if the attacker gains shell access to your Linux server.
Set the environment variables within /etc/rc.local (do not include the <> characters):
export SOME_LOGIN=<username>
export SOME_PASS=<password>
To see the value of an environment variable, use one of the following commands in the Linux shell:
printenv MY_VAR
echo $MY_VAR
To access those environment variables within Rails, use the following syntax:
Inside .rb files or at the rails console
ENV['MY_VAR']
Inside .yml files:
<%= ENV['MY_VAR'] %>
For anyone still having this issue, figaro now has an easy method in setting the production variables in heroku. Just run:
$ figaro heroku:set -e production
ryzalyusoff.
For Unix
You can use LINUX ENV in rails application.
# .env
GITHUB_SECRET_KEY=SECRET
TWITTER_ACCESS_KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXX
# in rails code
puts ENV["TWITTER_ACCESS_KEY"] # => SECRET
Create .env files for local machine and your production server. Export environment variables like this(on server with ssh):
export GITHUB_SECRET_KEY="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
Anyway, storing keys in config - bad idea. Just add .env.example, others keys configs add to .gitignore. Goodluck.
Example with Rails
For Windows
Syntax
SET variable
SET variable=string
SET /A "variable=expression"
SET "variable="
SET /P variable=[promptString]
SET "
Key
variable : A new or existing environment variable name e.g. _num
string : A text string to assign to the variable.
expression : Arithmetic expression
Windows CMD
I believe we should not push a secret file on git.
To ignore such file use gitignore file and push other code on the git.
On the server side just copy the secret file and create a symlink for that file.
You can find demo here http://www.elabs.se/blog/57-handle-secret-credentials-in-ruby-on-rails
You can set your environment variables in production in the same way, you do it for local system. However, there are couple of gems, which make it easier to track and push to production. Have a look at figaro. This will help you in setting up and deployment of env vars.
You can do this with figaro gem
or in rails 4 there is a file named secret.yml in config folder where you can define your environment variables this file is by default in .gitignore file.For production you need to manually copy that file to server for security reason so that your sensitive information is not available to any one
First create your variable like:
MY_ENV_VAR="this is my var"
And then make it global:
export MY_ENV_VAR
You can check if the process succeeded with:
printenv
Or:
echo MY_ENV_VAR

AWS OpsWorks Environment variables not working

I am running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit Rails Application and I am unable to access my App environment variables.
In OpsWorks App panel, I set my environment variables, say:
MYKEY: 1234
Then I save and deploy my app again to make these visible.
In my Rails app, or the rails console I get nil:
$ bundle exec rails c production
>ENV["MYKEY"]
=> nil
I have tried restarting the server. I'm not sure what I am missing, I have been using environment variables in other services.
How can I trace where these should be set?
OpsWorks stores environmental variables in different places depending on what kind of app you're deploying. On Rails / Passenger they should be saved in the Apache config file #{your_app_name}.conf. (Source)
This means they aren't available in your normal shell environment.
I know the Node.js recipes stored everything in an /srv/www/#{app_name}/shared/app.env file... which is then sourced to pull in the environment to run the Node server. This implementation detail also meant you could write shell scripts that sourced that app.env file, then called some Node script or whatever.
Of course, Rails isn't Node. I have no idea if the environmental variables are also stored somewhere else or not: a quick look at the Rails recipes in the OpsWorks cookbooks didn't find anything obvious, but maybe I missed something.
Depending on the amount of modifications you have going on in your OpsWorks cookbook, you could create a deploy recipe that does something like this:
application_environment_file do
user deploy[:user]
group deploy[:group]
path ::File.join(deploy[:deploy_to], "shared")
environment_variables deploy[:environment_variables]
end
(maybe adjusting the path)
Then to run your console, when you're SSHed into the server, do something like
sudo source /srv/www/my_app_name/shared/app.env; bundle exec rails console -e production or whatever.
AWS OpsWorks console lets you declare environment variables but to let them be available for our Rails app we need to use a Chef cookbook recipe plus some precautions.
In a nutshell we use the config/secrets.yml file combined with config/application.yml file, Figaro gem and a Chef cookbook recipe.
The chef cookbook recipe read the variables defined in OpsWorks console and let them available to Rails app writing the config/application.yml file.
I have published a detailed guide to explain how exactly do it. Link here.
These are the core points that I covered:
Use config/secrets.yml file (added from Rails 4.1)
Use Figaro gem to load variables in the environment
Declare environment variables inside AWS OpsWorks Console
Use a custom Chef recipe to create a config/application.yml file that Figaro will use to let variables available
I (with some help from Bruno at the AWS PopUp Loft in NYC) added some custom Chef code inside the after_restart.rb deploy hook, simply add the folder "deploy" to your apps root directory and inside add "after_restart.eb." In it ....
Chef::Log.info("Running deploy/after_restart.rb")
contents = []
node[:deploy].each do |application, deploy|
deploy[:environment_variables].each do |key, value|
contents << "export #{key}=\"'#{value}'\""
end
end
Chef::Log.info("Adding the environment variables to /etc/profile.d/startup_env_config.sh")
bash "create_startup_env_config.sh" do
user "root"
cwd "/etc/profile.d"
code <<-EOH
echo \''#{contents.join(" ")}\'' > startup_env_config.sh
source startup_env_config.sh
cd #{release_path}
EOH
end
And that's it. If you update the environment variables inside the OpsWorks panel remember to restart your instances.

How do the environment variables work within cloud9

I want a safe way to store the username and password of an API without other people seeing it within my cloud9 Ruby on Rails app. Is it safe to save them as environment variables?
I know my c9 code is public but are these variables also public?
How do I access them within the rails console? I tried ENV["VARIABLE_NAME"] but this does not seem to work within the console. Is there anything else I should do?
You can define environment variables in ~/.profile. Files outside of the workspace directory /home/ubuntu/workspace are not accessible for read only users. You can do e.g.
$ echo "export SECRET=geheim" >> ~/.profile
to define the variable SECRET and then use it through ENV["SECRET"] from your application. The runners (from the "run" button) and the terminal will evaluate ~/.profile and make the environment variable available to your app.
see also Storing securely passwords for connection to DB in opensource projects

env variables available in rails console but not in application

Never had such problem before with vps that I set up from zero, this one (Ubuntu 12.04, 64bit) was installed by some other developer.
The problem
in .bashrc file i have:
export FACEBOOK_ID=123456789
export FACEBOOK_SECRET=987654321
now in terminal if I type env I see these variables.
if I open rails console and type ENV["FACEBOOK_ID"] or ENV["FACEBOOK_SECRET"] I also can see the apropriate values.
The problem is that I have to use FACEBOOK_ID in the app in a view file and I do it with:
<%= ENV["FACEBOOK_ID"] %>
on local machine this returns the right value, in production on vps it returns nothing.
My idea is that the vps was not set up correctly, I couldnt find apache on it or ngnix, and the app is in var/www/apps/app_name/.
What could be wrong and how can I get this env variables in my template?
update
files available in root directory:
.bash_profile .bashrc .cshrc .zprofile .zshrc
Don't put it in local environment. What to do when you deploy the app? What to do when you want to develop another app on your local machine which use Facebook id as well?
Use Figaro gem. It's built for handling such case, env variables and private data. The env variables can be set in YAML file in app and won't be committed to repo. You won't regret.

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