Boxfuse Setup & Deployment for Play Framework in Scala

Greeting! Let’s deploy playframework using Boxfuse.

Getting Started

• Visit the Boxfuse website.
• Login with your GitHub account.
• Connect your AWS account and give permission for using json.
• Make sure you select the correct AWS region.
• Download the personalized Boxfuse client.
• Place it in root directory and add it to env variable.
• In my case, I placed it inside ~/go/installation/amd/go/boxfuse/.
• To add boxfuse to env variables I used:

export GOROOT=/Users/<username>/go/installation/amd/go
export GOPATH=/Users/<username>/go
export GOBIN=$GOPATH/bin
export GO111MODULE=on
export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$GOROOT/bin:$PATH

• Now, you can check if it is installed properly using boxfuse -v.
• Then, navigate to the Play project and create a distribution image using sbt dist. It should show something like this:

[info] Main Scala API documentation successful.
[warn] there were two feature warnings; re-run with -feature for details
[warn] 67 warnings found
[success] All package validations passed
[info] Your package is ready in /Project/directory/target/universal/<Project_Name>-1.0.zip
[success] Total time: 154 s (02:34), completed 27-Oct-2021, 3:16:15 PM

• Now, run dist image with Boxfuse using boxfuse run -env=test (Note: it will run on AWS).
• Define all required env variables in the boxfuse.conf file located in Boxfuse installation directory as below:

envvars.myvar=myvalue
envvars.otherone=Something Else

• Or to pass env variables from terminal, use this: boxfuse run -env=test envvars.SERVER_PORT=26657 envvars.PLAY_HTTP_SECRET="YOUR_PLAY_SECRET" -capacity=1:t2.micro
• -capacity=1:t2.micro is used to define the number of instances and types of instances to deploy.
• For more configuration, check <boxfuse-installation-directory>/conf/boxfuse.conf (Note: by default, it shows all the logs in the console).

Errors & Fixes

1. Unable to create RDS DB instance
   • ERROR: Running
   • WARNING: Run failed: Unable to create RDS DB instance
   • ERROR: Running 0xankit/:0.0.0.1635328070074 failed!
   • FIXED: Change db.t2.micro to db.t3.micro from boxfuse dashboard by clicking on scale and then try again.
2. Unable to start VirtualBox instance boxfuse-dev-hdd-2016.02.09_0xankit-<Project_Name>
   • ERROR: Unable to start VirtualBox instance boxfuse-dev-hdd-2016.02.09_0xankit-
   • ensure VirtualBox is working correctly
   • ensure hardware virtualization (VT-x or AMD-V) is enabled on your machine and check by running /usr/local/bin/VBoxManage list hostinfo
   • FIXED: Define -env=test
3. JVM exited with status 255

"  play.core.server.ProdServerStart
i-0cd1a2fa4e0bcc642 => 2021-10-28 11:08:56.147 JVM exited with status 255
i-0cd1a2fa4e0bcc642 => 2021-10-28 11:08:56.147 Rebooting in 15 seconds ...

• FIXED: Define logs.filter.level=TRACE to see exact error.

1. Postgres root certificate error: Could not open SSL root certificate file.
   • ERROR:

i-0a5d6b28fb9d1c587 => 2021-10-29 12:24:43.512 Caused by: org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: Could not open SSL root certificate file //.postgresql/root.crt.

• FIXED: Define slick.dbs.default.db.properties.sslfactory="org.postgresql.ssl.NonValidatingFactory" in application.conf

1. For timeout error
   • FIXED: Define slick.dbs.default.db.connectionTimeout=15s in application.conf
2. Evolutions could not be applied
   • FIXED: Define play.evolutions.autoApply=true in application.conf
3. Could not write permission issue
   • FIXED: Define play.server.pidfile.path=/dev/null in application.conf

And with that, you’ve crossed another level to becoming a boss coder. GG!

I hope you found this article instructional and informative. If you have any feedback or queries, please let me know in the comments below. And follow me on twitter!