Rails doesn't see environment variable

Question

I am trying to move a Rails application into production but I am having a problem with Rails not seeing my environment variable.

I have the password for my database setup in my .bashrc file like

export APP_NAME_DATABASE_PASSWORD=secretkey

In irb

ENV["APP_NAME_DATABASE_PASSWORD"]

returns secretkey.

Using

RAILS_ENV=production rails c

and just

rails c

returns secretkey but when starting the application I get

Access is denied (using password: NO)

I am using a slightly modified version of the init script on "How To Deploy a Rails App with Unicorn and Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04" to start unicorn.

It is being hosted on Ubuntu Server 14.04.

Answer 1

export APP_NAME_DATABASE_PASSWORD=secretkey is most likely scoping your environment variable to a bash process. Since Unicorn doesn't run as a child of bash process, it doesn't have access to this environment variable.

I'd recommend storing your ENV vars in a single place, such as application.yml and loading them into your ruby environment at the start of your application. There are some great tools that do this. I'd recommend looking into Figaro: https://github.com/laserlemon/figaro.

Here's another post relevant to your question: Re-source .bashrc when restarting unicorn?