FAQs

How do I get started with RightScale, AWS, and EC2?

If you are new to RightScale, please our Getting Started and Tutorials sections.

If you are new to AWS, please read the Amazon Web Services (AWS) reference page or the Sign up for Amazon Web Services (AWS) page.

How do I handle DNS on EC2?

One of the most common questions that we get from customers is "How do I handle DNS on EC2?" 

Don't worry, we have a solution. We have created a robust DNS solution built on top of DNSMadeEasy's DNS service (http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com) that allows our users to run a very high quality DNS system in the cloud. Yes, you could create a DNS solution with another provider, but we already have everything built for DNSMadeEasy.  If you do not want to use DNSMadeEasy and would like to use another provider, please contact sales@rightscale.com.

The first thing that you will want to do is to obtain a set of DNS entries. If you haven't done so already, register a domain name (ex:  www.mysite.com) with a DNS provider.  You can also register a domain name with DME as well.  Once you have a domain, you need to create an account on DNSMadeEasy.

Why is my 'PHP SVN code checkout' failing?

'svn+ssh' users will need to make a few tweaks because none of the 'svn' options work when it goes through an SSH tunnel. Therefore, passwords cannot be passed in interactively. The best way to solve this problem is to use an authentication key (public and private SSH key).

 

How do I ssh into my machines?

See How do I access my machines via SSH?

How do I sign up for Amazon's Web Services and get my AWS credentials?

Please follow the instructions on the Sign up for Amazon Web Services (AWS) page.

In my logs I see this message:

Processing HomeController#server-status (for 127.0.0.1 at 2008-01-23 02:45:12) [GET]
  Session ID: e7e5b4552107447afd2ada002040ac65
  Parameters: {"action"=>"server-status", "controller"=>"home", "auto"=>nil}
Redirected to http://localhost/curtain/intro
Filter chain halted as [#<ActionController::Filters::ClassMethods::SymbolFilter:0xb6e7ff84 @filter=:curtain_authorize>] returned false.
Completed in 0.00076 (1309 reqs/sec) | DB: 0.00000 (0%) | 302 Found [http://localhost/server-status?auto]

 

These requests are not from the load balancer, but from the monitoring tool that tries to get status information about apache so you can view it in the monitoring tab of the instance. If these requests are getting all the way to Rails, it means that the apache handler for server status is not correctly configured (i.e. these requests should be directly answered by Apache, rather than forwarded to Rails). Since our templates automatically configure this by default, an error would be caused by a user misconfiguration. In a nutshell, you have to make sure that ExtendedStatus is "ON" and that you have the /server-status url enabled and handled by Apache's server-status handler. For example, you could put this snippet into '/etc/httpd/conf.d/status.conf':

ExtendedStatus On
<Location /server-status>
   SetHandler server-status
   Order deny,allow
   Deny from all
   Allow from localhost
</Location>

 and restart apache (i.e., service httpd graceful)

 

How do I ensure that HAProxy doesn't forward traffic to other sites?

See How do I set up HAProxy so that it does not point at other machines?