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Sophia's Not So Simple Blog

by Sophia Lafferty-Hess

23 Feb 2014

Here is a link to my blog up and running: Sophia's blog post

My process for getting my instance of Simple onto Heroku was slightly frustrating but was also a good learning experience. The first time I created the Simple Blog, my user name and password would not authenticate. I tried to change my password in the settings.py file and commit and push these changes with no success. I then started over by deleting the simplehack repo and making a new Heroku app. On this second try, I received an application error.

I was not sure how to troubleshoot these issues (since I wasn’t really sure what the scripts were doing) so I contacted Elliott for help. I then tried again to start the process fresh and received the same application error. I discovered through viewing the Heroku logs, this was caused by an H10 error that seemed to be connected to a database issue, which caused the app to crash. Elliott also suggested over email that I look at my hidden .bashrc file and delete any lines of code that referenced Heroku. I did this, started over, and received an application error again. Elliott and I then did a video chat session with screenshare and walked through the process together.

First, Elliott showed me how I had multiple copies of Heroku databases in both the .bashrc and db.py files and this was most likely caused by the previous script issue. He then had me do a git reset --hard which reset my box to a previous commit. We then walked through the process together and Elliot explained what each command line prompt was doing. This was really helpful to demystify the process and clarify why I was having issues. Essentially, my db.py file should only have been pointing to the database linked to my Heroku app; however, it listed multiple databases which confused Heroku.

Through this process, I have gained a good grasp on how to do some basic things in command line including doing a commit, calling log files, and viewing hidden files. It also exemplified how to troubleshoot an issue one really needs to thoroughly understand the applications and scripts being used. Elliott was great at walking me through this, thanks!

Sophia is a third year dual-degree MSIS and Masters of Public Administration student. Find Sophia Lafferty-Hess on Twitter, Github, and on the web.
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