Rails: DEPRECATION WARNING: You didn't set config.secret_key_base - ruby-on-rails

I receive this warning when running my specs. Is there a best practice for generating a secret_key_base, or will any string suffice (with regard to security concerns)?

You propably upgraded to Rails 4 from a 3.x or a previous version.
First generate a random secret key value:
$ bundle exec rake secret
Then take that value and put it in config/initializers/secret_token.rb:
YourApp::Application.config.secret_key_base = 'your-secret'
replacing YourApp with the name of your application.
The reason for this is explained here.
Also see http://guides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#config-secrets-yml

As of 4.1, you need to use the config/secrets.yml file. This is discussed in http://guides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#config-secrets-yml .

You simply need to create a secret_token.rb file in the config/initializers directory.
Contents of the file below:
YourAppNameHere::Application.config.secret_key_base = #type the key you generated with rake secret here
then save the file
close your server:
ctrl c
restart it: rails s
You'll now see the basic rails app page you saw in the last chapter (If you're working through Hartl's tutorial)

If you are a total noob like me, remember to put the secret_key_base = 'whatever' inside single quotes. Just a copy and paste without quotes will throw an error :
C:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-4.0.8/lib/act
ive_support/dependencies.rb:223:in `load': C:/Users/Jeff C/documents/rails_proje
cts/first_app/config/initializers/secret_token.rb:1: syntax error, unexpected tI
DENTIFIER, expecting $end (SyntaxError)

Had this same issue when working on a Rails 4 application that was upgraded to Rails 5.
All I had to do was run the command below to generate a secret key:
bundle exec rake secret
And then I added the secret key to the config/secret.yml file:
development:
secret_key_base: 21bc6137d0496a2a11f4459a7c7deb4f782d223d41ee328934b2fe7a405a42ec63eb3829db67f0ec6a759e134ba0bb15dc2d01168b64d83efcf8d42b403ac8bd
That's all.
I hope this helps

Related

Rails Production - How to set Secret Key Base?

So I am trying to get my rails app to deploy in production mode, but I get the error: Missing secret_token and secret_key_base for 'production' environment, set these values in config/secrets.yml
My secrets.yml file is as expected:
development:
secret_key_base: xxxxxxx
test:
secret_key_base: xxxxxxx
production:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
But even after google and research, I have no idea what to do with the production secret key base. Most of the info out there assumes I have certain background knowledge, but the reality is that I'm a noob.
Can anyone explain to me how to set my secret key and get this to work in production mode?
You can generate the key by using following commands
$ irb
>> require 'securerandom'
=> true
>> SecureRandom.hex(64)
=> "3fe397575565365108556c3e5549f139e8078a8ec8fd2675a83de96289b30550a266ac04488d7086322efbe573738e7b3ae005b2e3d9afd718aa337fa5e329cf"
>> exit
The errors you are getting just indicate that the environment variable for secret_key_base are not properly set on the server.
You can use various scripts like capistrano that automate the process of setting these before the application is run.
As for a quick fix try this:
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=YOUR SECRET BASE
Validate the environment variables and check if these have been set.
Command:
env | grep -E "SECRET_TOKEN|SECRET_KEY_BASE"
If your values pop up then these are set on the production server.
Also it is best practice to use ENV.fetch(SECRET_KEY) as this will raise an exception before the app even tries to start.
This answer helped me a lot. He indicates you how to config the secrets.yml file in production and how to read it from the environment:
original link:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/26172408/4962760
I had the same problem and I solved it by creating an environment
variable to be loaded every time that I logged in to the production
server and made a mini guide of the steps to configure it:
https://gist.github.com/pablosalgadom/4d75f30517edc6230a67
I was using Rails 4.1 with Unicorn v4.8.2, when I tried to deploy my
app it didn't start properly and in the unicorn.log file I found this
error message:
"app error: Missing secret_key_base for 'production' environment, set
this value in config/secrets.yml (RuntimeError)"
After some research I found out that Rails 4.1 changed the way to
manage the secret_key, so if you read the secrets.yml file located at
[exampleRailsProject]/config/secrets.yml you'll find something like
this:
Do not keep production secrets in the repository,
instead read values from the environment. production: secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %> This means that rails
recommends you to use an environment variable for the secret_key_base
in your production server, in order to solve this error you should
follow this steps to create an environment variable for Linux (in my
case Ubuntu) in your production server:
1.- In the terminal of your production server execute the next command:
$ RAILS_ENV=production rake secret This returns a large string with
letters and numbers, copy that (we will refer to that code as
GENERATED_CODE).
2.1- Login as root user to your server, find this file and edit it: $ vi /etc/profile
Go to the bottom of the file ("SHIFT + G" for capital G in VI)
Write your environment variable with the GENERATED_CODE (Press "i" key
to write in VI), be sure to be in a new line at the end of the file:
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE Save the changes and close the
file (we push "ESC" key and then write ":x" and "ENTER" key for save
and exit in VI)
2.2 But if you login as normal user, lets call it example_user for this gist, you will need to find one of this other files:
$ vi ~/.bash_profile $ vi ~/.bash_login $ vi ~/.profile These files
are in order of importance, that means that if you have the first
file, then you wouldn't need to write in the others. So if you found
this 2 files in your directory "~/.bash_profile" and "~/.profile" you
only will have to write in the first one "~/.bash_profile", because
Linux will read only this one and the other will be ignored.
Then we go to the bottom of the file ("SHIFT + G" for capital G in VI)
And we will write our environment variable with our GENERATED_CODE
(Press "i" key to write in VI), be sure to be in a new line at the end
of the file:
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE Having written the code, save
the changes and close the file (we push "ESC" key and then write ":x"
and "ENTER" key for save and exit in VI)
3.- You can verify that our environment variable is properly set in Linux with this command:
$ printenv | grep SECRET_KEY_BASE or with:
$ echo $SECRET_KEY_BASE When you execute this command, if everything
went ok, it will show you the GENERATED_CODE from before. Finally with
all the configuration done you should be able to deploy without
problems your Rails app with Unicorn or other.
When you close your shell terminal and login again to the production
server you will have this environment variable set and ready to use
it.
And thats it!! I hope this mini guide help you to solve this error.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Linux or Rails guru, so if you find something
wrong or any error I will be glad to fix it!
nowadays (rails 6) rails generate a secret key base in tmp/development_secret.txt for you.
and in production environment the best is having SECRET_KEY_BASE as en env variable, it will get picked up by rails.
you can check with Rails.application.secret_key_base.
should give you a long string of numbers and characters from 'a' to 'f' (a 128 chars long hexadecimal encoded string)
As you can see, there is a hardcoded value for the development and test environments, but the one for production comes from a variable. First of all, why this way? It is a security feature. This way, if you check this file into version control such as git or svn, the development and test values get shared, which is fine, but the production one (the one that would be used on a real website) isn't, so no one can look at the source to get that secret.
As for the variable used, ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"], this is an environment variable from the environment Rails is run in (not to be confused with the Rails "environment", such as development, test, and production). These environment variables come from the shell. As mentioned in JensD's post, you can set this environment variable temporarily with:
export SECRET_TOKEN=YOUR SECRET TOKEN
export SECRET_KEY_TOKEN=YOUR SECRET BASE
To generate a new secret token, use the rake secret command in the command line.
That is temporary, however, and not a good final solution. For a final solution, check out this article which has a quick bit near the end on implementing dotenv to load configuration secrets. Remember, if you use version control, be sure to exclude your .env file from being checked in!
Setting dotenv up takes a little bit of work, but I highly recommend it over trying to manually configure these environment variables.

RubyonRails- You must set config.secret_key_base in your app's config

I am trying to go to my localhost and I keep getting the following error in my browser:
You must set config.secret_key_base in your app's config
I have looked around and people say that you have to rake the secret key and then put it into config/initializers/secret_token.rb but I don't have a secret_token.rb file in my folder. I am running ruby version ruby 2.1.2p9 and rails version Rails 4.0.8 I am following the tutorial at railstutorial.org if that helps on 2.2
Run rake secret to generate a new token.
Now create a new file config/initializers/secret_token.rb and add the following:
MyApp::Application.config.secret_key_base = '<token>'
Replace <token> with the one you just generated and replace MyApp with the actual module name of your app. You can find the module name of your app at the top of config/environments/development.rb
Rails-5
In rails-5, create config/initializers/secret_token.rb
Add Rails.application.config.secret_key_base= 'secret_token'
where 'secret_token' = rake:secret
Restart the server

rails secret_key_base not being recognized in production

So I am trying to deploy my rails app in production. When I go to the page I get a 500 error. When I go to my error logs I get the following error:
Exception RuntimeError in Rack application object (Missing `secret_key_base` for 'production' environment, set this value in `config/secrets.yml`)
I am running Rails 4.1 and my config/secrets.yml looks like this:
development:
secret_key_base: <development key>
test:
secret_key_base: <test key>
# Do not keep production secrets in the repository,
# instead read values from the environment.
production:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
I ran rake secret to get the key and put the export in my bash_profile and sourced it. I ran rake assets:precompile successfully. Yet I still keep getting this error. Any ideas?
Update: I tried to update the error message provided to give slightly better information....and the message didn't update. I then tried adding the key directly to the yml file instead of using an environment variable and still no dice. Im running on hostmonster so I can't restart the server.....but something is telling me thats what needs to be done...
Update 2: After sleeping through the night it seems that this issue is no longer an issue. It must have been some sort of caching. Now my issue is that its trying to use an old config that i changed days ago for my database. If I figure out how to nullify the cache I will post it here and mark it as an answer. If someone else knows how to do it please let me know and I will mark it as an answer. I am using HostMonster as my hosting and followed the steps they have on their site for hosting my rails app.
I had the same problem and I solved creating an environment variable to be loaded every time that I login to the production server and made a mini guide of the steps to configure it by your self:
So I was using Rails 4.1 with Unicorn v4.8.2 and when I tried to deploy my app it doesn't start properly and into the unicorn.log file i found this error message:
app error: Missing secret_key_base for 'production' environment, set this value in config/secrets.yml (RuntimeError)
After a little research I found that Rails 4.1 change the way to manage the secret_key, so if we read the secrets.yml file located at exampleRailsProject/config/secrets.yml (you need to replace "exampleRailsProject" for your project name) you will find something like this:
# Do not keep production secrets in the repository,
# instead read values from the environment.
production:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
This means that rails recommends you to use an environment variable for the secret_key_base in our production server, so in order to solve this error you will need to follow this steps to create an environment variable for linux (in my case it is Ubuntu) in our production server:
1.- In the terminal of our production server you will execute the next command:
$ RAILS_ENV=production rake secret
This will give a large string with letters and numbers, this is what you need, so copy that (we will refer to that code as GENERATED_CODE).
2.1- Now if we login as root user to our server we will need to find this file and open it:
$ vi /etc/profile
Then we go to the bottom of the file ("SHIFT + G" for capital G in VI)
And we will write our environment variable with our GENERATED_CODE (Press "i" key to write in VI), be sure to be in a new line at the end of the file:
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE
Having written the code we save the changes and close the file (we push "ESC" key and then write ":x" and "ENTER" key for save and exit in VI)
2.2 But if we login as normal user, lets call it example_user for this gist, we will need to find one of this other files:
$ vi ~/.bash_profile
$ vi ~/.bash_login
$ vi ~/.profile
These files are in order of importance, that means that if you have the first file, then you wouldn't need to write in the others. So if you found this 2 files in your directory "~/.bash_profile" and "~/.profile" you only will have to write in the first one "~/.bash_profile", because linux will read only this one and the other will be ignored.
Then we go to the bottom of the file ("SHIFT + G" for capital G in VI)
And we will write our environment variable with our GENERATED_CODE (Press "i" key to write in VI), be sure to be in a new line at the end of the file:
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE
Having written the code we save the changes and close the file (we push "ESC" key and then write ":x" and "ENTER" key for save and exit in VI)
3.-We can verify that our environment variable is properly set in linux with this command:
$ printenv | grep SECRET_KEY_BASE
or with:
$ echo $SECRET_KEY_BASE
When you execute this command, if everything went ok, it will show you the GENERATED_CODE that we generated before. Finally with all the configuration done you can deploy without problems your Rails app with Unicorn or other.
Now when you close your shell terminal and login again to the production server you will have this environment variable set and ready to use it.
And Thats it!! I hope this mini guide help you to solve this error.
You need to restart your server, because after YourAppName::Application.initialize! called in config/environment.rb you can not change your settings.
Checkout your yml markup, probably there some errors
Probably something wrong in your config/initializers/secret_token.rb
The problem is not with ENV pseudo-hash. secret_key_base will be nil if in ENV no such a key.

How to solve error "Missing `secret_key_base` for 'production' environment" (Rails 4.1)

I created a Rails application, using Rails 4.1, from scratch and I am facing a strange problem that I am not able to solve.
Every time I try to deploy my application on Heroku I get an error 500:
Missing `secret_key_base` for 'production' environment, set this value in `config/secrets.yml`
The secret.yml file contains the following configuration:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
On Heroku I configured the "SECRET_KEY_BASE" environment variable with the result of the rake secret command. If I launch heroku config, I can see the variable with the correct name and value.
Why am I still getting this error?
I had the same problem and solved it by creating an environment variable to be loaded every time I logged in to the production server, and made a mini-guide of the steps to configure it:
I was using Rails 4.1 with Unicorn v4.8.2 and when I tried to deploy my application it didn't start properly and in the unicorn.log file I found this error message:
app error: Missing `secret_key_base` for 'production' environment, set this value in `config/secrets.yml` (RuntimeError)
After some research I found out that Rails 4.1 changed the way to manage the secret_key, so if you read the secrets.yml file located at exampleRailsProject/config/secrets.yml you'll find something like this:
# Do not keep production secrets in the repository,
# instead read values from the environment.
production:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
This means that Rails recommends you to use an environment variable for the secret_key_base in your production server. In order to solve this error you should follow these steps to create an environment variable for Linux (in my case Ubuntu) in your production server:
In the terminal of your production server execute:
$ RAILS_ENV=production rake secret
This returns a large string with letters and numbers. Copy that, which we will refer to that code as GENERATED_CODE.
Login to your server
If you login as the root user, find this file and edit it:
$ vi /etc/profile
Go to the bottom of the file using Shift+G (capital "G") in vi.
Write your environment variable with the GENERATED_CODE, pressing i to insert in vi. Be sure to be in a new line at the end of the file:
$ export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE
Save the changes and close the file using Esc and then ":x" and Enter for save and exit in vi.
But if you login as normal user, let's call it "example_user" for this gist, you will need to find one of these other files:
$ vi ~/.bash_profile
$ vi ~/.bash_login
$ vi ~/.profile
These files are in order of importance, which means that if you have the first file, then you wouldn't need to edit the others. If you found these two files in your directory ~/.bash_profile and ~/.profile you only will have to write in the first one ~/.bash_profile, because Linux will read only this one and the other will be ignored.
Then we go to the bottom of the file using Shift+G again and write the environment variable with our GENERATED_CODE using i again, and be sure add a new line at the end of the file:
$ export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE
Having written the code, save the changes and close the file using Esc again and ":x" and Enter to save and exit.
You can verify that our environment variable is properly set in Linux with this command:
$ printenv | grep SECRET_KEY_BASE
or with:
$ echo $SECRET_KEY_BASE
When you execute this command, if everything went ok, it will show you the GENERATED_CODE from before. Finally with all the configuration done you should be able to deploy without problems your Rails application with Unicorn or some other tool.
When you close your shell and login again to the production server you will have this environment variable set and ready to use it.
And that's it! I hope this mini-guide helps you solve this error.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Linux or Rails guru, so if you find something wrong or any error I will be glad to fix it.
I'm going to assume that you do not have your secrets.yml checked into source control (ie. it's in the .gitignore file). Even if this isn't your situation, it's what many other people viewing this question have done because they have their code exposed on Github and don't want their secret key floating around.
If it's not in source control, Heroku doesn't know about it. So Rails is looking for Rails.application.secrets.secret_key_base and it hasn't been set because Rails sets it by checking the secrets.yml file which doesn't exist. The simple workaround is to go into your config/environments/production.rb file and add the following line:
Rails.application.configure do
...
config.secret_key_base = ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"]
...
end
This tells your application to set the secret key using the environment variable instead of looking for it in secrets.yml. It would have saved me a lot of time to know this up front.
Add config/secrets.yml to version control and deploy again. You might need to remove a line from .gitignore so that you can commit the file.
I had this exact same issue and it just turned out that the boilerplate .gitignore Github created for my Rails application included config/secrets.yml.
This worked for me.
SSH into your production server and cd into your current directory, run bundle exec rake secret or rake secret, you will get a long string as an output, copy that string.
Now run sudo nano /etc/environment.
Paste at the bottom of the file
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=rake secret
ruby -e 'p ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"]'
Where rake secret is the string you just copied, paste that copied string in place of rake secret.
Restart the server and test by running echo $SECRET_KEY_BASE.
While you can use initializers like the other answers, the conventional Rails 4.1+ way is to use the config/secrets.yml. The reason for the Rails team to introduce this is beyond the scope of this answer but the TL;DR is that secret_token.rb conflates configuration and code as well as being a security risk since the token is checked into source control history and the only system that needs to know the production secret token is the production infrastructure.
You should add this file to .gitignore much like you wouldn't add config/database.yml to source control either.
Referencing Heroku's own code for setting up config/database.yml from DATABASE_URL in their Buildpack for Ruby, I ended up forking their repo and modified it to create config/secrets.yml from SECRETS_KEY_BASE environment variable.
Since this feature was introduced in Rails 4.1, I felt it was appropriate to edit ./lib/language_pack/rails41.rb and add this functionality.
The following is the snippet from the modified buildpack I created at my company:
class LanguagePack::Rails41 < LanguagePack::Rails4
# ...
def compile
instrument "rails41.compile" do
super
allow_git do
create_secrets_yml
end
end
end
# ...
# writes ERB based secrets.yml for Rails 4.1+
def create_secrets_yml
instrument 'ruby.create_secrets_yml' do
log("create_secrets_yml") do
return unless File.directory?("config")
topic("Writing config/secrets.yml to read from SECRET_KEY_BASE")
File.open("config/secrets.yml", "w") do |file|
file.puts <<-SECRETS_YML
<%
raise "No RACK_ENV or RAILS_ENV found" unless ENV["RAILS_ENV"] || ENV["RACK_ENV"]
%>
<%= ENV["RAILS_ENV"] || ENV["RACK_ENV"] %>:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
SECRETS_YML
end
end
end
end
# ...
end
You can of course extend this code to add other secrets (e.g. third party API keys, etc.) to be read off of your environment variable:
...
<%= ENV["RAILS_ENV"] || ENV["RACK_ENV"] %>:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
third_party_api_key: <%= ENV["THIRD_PARTY_API"] %>
This way, you can access this secret in a very standard way:
Rails.application.secrets.third_party_api_key
Before redeploying your app, be sure to set your environment variable first:
Then add your modified buildpack (or you're more than welcome to link to mine) to your Heroku app (see Heroku's documentation) and redeploy your app.
The buildpack will automatically create your config/secrets.yml from your environment variable as part of the dyno build process every time you git push to Heroku.
EDIT: Heroku's own documentation suggests creating config/secrets.yml to read from the environment variable but this implies you should check this file into source control. In my case, this doesn't work well since I have hardcoded secrets for development and testing environments that I'd rather not check in.
You can export the secret keys to as environment variables on the ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile of your server:
export SECRET_KEY_BASE = "YOUR_SECRET_KEY"
And then, you can source your .bashrc or .bash_profile:
source ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bash_profile
Never commit your secrets.yml
For rails6, I was facing the same problem as I was missing the following files. Once I added them the issue was resolved:
1. config/master.key
2. config/credentials.yml.enc
Make sure you have these files!
What I did :
On my production server, I create a config file (confthin.yml) for Thin (I'm using it) and add the following information :
environment: production
user: www-data
group: www-data
SECRET_KEY_BASE: mysecretkeyproduction
I then launch the app with
thin start -C /whereeveristhefieonprod/configthin.yml
Work like a charm and then no need to have the secret key on version control
Hope it could help, but I'm sure the same thing could be done with Unicorn and others.
I have a patch that I've used in a Rails 4.1 app to let me continue using the legacy key generator (and hence backwards session compatibility with Rails 3), by allowing the secret_key_base to be blank.
Rails::Application.class_eval do
# the key_generator will then use ActiveSupport::LegacyKeyGenerator.new(config.secret_token)
fail "I'm sorry, Dave, there's no :validate_secret_key_config!" unless instance_method(:validate_secret_key_config!)
def validate_secret_key_config! #:nodoc:
config.secret_token = secrets.secret_token
if config.secret_token.blank?
raise "Missing `secret_token` for '#{Rails.env}' environment, set this value in `config/secrets.yml`"
end
end
end
I've since reformatted the patch are submitted it to Rails as a Pull Request
I've created config/initializers/secret_key.rb file and I wrote only following line of code:
Rails.application.config.secret_key_base = ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"]
But I think that solution posted by #Erik Trautman is more elegant ;)
Edit:
Oh, and finally I found this advice on Heroku: https://devcenter.heroku.com/changelog-items/426 :)
Enjoy!
this is works good https://gist.github.com/pablosalgadom/4d75f30517edc6230a67
for root user should edit
$ /etc/profile
but if you non root should put the generate code in the following
$ ~/.bash_profile
$ ~/.bash_login
$ ~/.profile
On Nginx/Passenger/Ruby (2.4)/Rails (5.1.1) nothing else worked except:
passenger_env_var in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default in the server block.
Source: https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/config/nginx/reference/#passenger_env_var
Demi Magus answer worked for me until Rails 5.
On Apache2/Passenger/Ruby (2.4)/Rails (5.1.6), I had to put
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GENERATED_CODE
from Demi Magus answer in /etc/apache2/envvars, cause /etc/profile seems to be ignored.
Source: https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/indepth/environment_variables.html#apache
In my case, the problem was that config/master.key was not in version control, and I had created the project on a different computer.
The default .gitignore that Rails creates excludes this file. Since it's impossible to deploy without having this file, it needs to be in version control, in order to be able to deploy from any team member's computer.
Solution: remove the config/master.key line from .gitignore, commit the file from the computer where the project was created, and now you can git pull on the other computer and deploy from it.
People are saying not to commit some of these files to version control, without offering an alternative solution. As long as you're not working on an open source project, I see no reason not to commit everything that's required to run the project, including credentials.
I had the same problem after I used the .gitignore file from https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Rails.gitignore
Everything worked out fine after I commented the following lines in the .gitignore file.
config/initializers/secret_token.rb
config/secrets.yml

Ruby on Rails config.secret_token error

I just started learning ruby on rails.
I followed a lot of install examples, but when i ran the example am getting this error
A secret is required to generate an integrity hash for cookie session data. Use config.secret_token = "some secret phrase of at least 30 characters"in config/initializers/secret_token.rb
I search for it but i dont see too much help.
plz help.
Platform: Mac OS X.
The easiest way to generate a new secret token is to run
rake secret
at the command line.
Your token should have been generated automatically by Rails, but you could still use something like:
irb(main):007:0> "#{ActiveSupport::SecureRandom.hex(64)}"
=> "921b00fcfabe0368d70627020f3b4c969cfd9bdc2474f4040c1ae976f687014694beb5d36dfc0c41bac8ebde96a14fceaee228d6e34d8183c5d7cc99d310d4f9"
meaning, you can generate some random string and put it into your config/initializers/secret_token.rb file:
# Be sure to restart your server when you modify this file.
Yourapp::Application.config.secret_token = '921b00fcfabe0368d70627020f3b4c969cfd9bdc2474f4040c1ae976f687014694beb5d36dfc0c41bac8ebde96a14fceaee228d6e34d8183c5d7cc99d310d4f9'
This is an issue with rails version probably. I had this issue when I uninstalled Rails 4 and installed Rails 3. After checking rails -v and seeing that it was indeed Rails 3, I executed rails new myapp. For some reason the configuration file config/initializers/secret_token.rb had the "config.secret_key_base" variable defined, which appears to be how Rails 4 does it. I was able to fix it by changing it to "config.secret_token", which I believe is what Rails 3 uses.
This simple command worked for me :
rvmsudo rake generate_secret_token
Make sure you have this in your environment.rb:
YourApp::Application.initialize!
Ran into this same issue and found out my config/initializers/secret_token.rb file was being ignored by git in my .gitignore file. Check out the config/initializers directory in your git source location and make sure the secret_token.rb file exists. If it doesn't edit your .gitignore file so that git will not ignore the secret_token.rb file and commit your changes (usually hidden - I used these simple commands to display hidden files on a mac http://osxdaily.com/2009/02/25/show-hidden-files-in-os-x/).

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