Application failed to start (port 8080) not available

Question

I am trying to deploy my node.js application (with express and mongoose) to openshift and I am not able to do so. The application works perfectly on my local environment.

my entry point is the file /bin/www

I establish this as the entry point on openshift with this line in the package.json file (per this thread):

"main": "bin/www",

I have made sure to set my mongodb connection using environment variables according to the guide like so:

// default to a localhost configuration:
var mongoConnectionString = 'mongodb://127.0.0.1/code-blog';

// if OPENSHIFT env variables are present, use the available connection info:
if (process.env.OPENSHIFT_MONGODB_DB_PASSWORD) {
  mongoConnectionString = process.env.OPENSHIFT_MONGODB_DB_USERNAME + ":" +
  process.env.OPENSHIFT_MONGODB_DB_PASSWORD + "@" +
  process.env.OPENSHIFT_MONGODB_DB_HOST + ':' +
  process.env.OPENSHIFT_MONGODB_DB_PORT + '/' +
  process.env.OPENSHIFT_APP_NAME;
}

mongoose.connect(mongoConnectionString);

The error that I get is:

remote: Waiting for application port (8080) become available ...
remote: Application 'codeblog' failed to start (port 8080 not available)
remote: -------------------------
remote: Git Post-Receive Result: failure
remote: Activation status: failure
remote: Activation failed for the following gears:
remote: 558a25bd5973ca7a74000162 (Error activating gear: CLIENT_ERROR: Failed to
 execute: 'control start' for /var/lib/openshift/558a25bd5973ca7a74000162/nodejs

remote: #<IO:0x00000000b49380>
remote: #<IO:0x00000000b49308>
remote: )
remote: Deployment completed with status: failure
remote: postreceive failed
To ssh://[email protected]/~/git/codebl
og.git/
   29635a8..7a0e926  master -> master

This is peculior to me because I do not specify port 8080 anywhere. In fact, the default port is specified here:

var port = normalizePort(process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_PORT || "3000");
var server_ip_address = process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_IP || "127.0.0.1";

app.set('port', port);

var server = http.createServer(app);

I am not really sure where to go from here. I don't seem to have enough information to determine my next step.

[edit] I added some logging to test what port this is running on, but the logging statement is never run. Here is the code

console.log("TEST TEST TEST");

var app = require('../app');
var debug = require('debug')('ProjectTemplate:server');
var http = require('http');

var port = normalizePort(process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_PORT || "3000");
var server_ip_address = process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_IP || "127.0.0.1";

console.log("PORT: ", port);

and output

TEST TEST TEST
module.js:340
    throw err;
    ^
Error: Cannot find module './routes/logIn'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:338:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:280:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:364:17)
    at require (module.js:380:17)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/var/lib/openshift/558a25bd5973ca7a74000162/app-root/           runtime/repo/app.js:26:13)

TEST TEST TEST is from a logging statement at the beginning of the entry point file. Something seems to fail before it hits the console.log("PORT: ", port); It is probable that this is something to do with app.js where the MongoDb connection is made.

[/edit]

Answer 1

Had exactly same error message: Application 'appname' failed to start (port 8080 not available) on open shift node app

After a lot of reading found out that many different users came to different solutions for the same error message, including myself. So I'd advice not to look for quick solutions for this error. The most important step is step 1 in the below list.

My solution was to add a missing dependency in package.json, for my particular case I needed to add "bcrypt":"~0.8.5", such a stupid thing!

Now, how did I get to fix the issue only knowing the "port 8080 not available" error:

1. ssh'd into the app, went to the app repo dir (cd $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR) and run npm start
2. Got [...] Error: Cannot find module 'bcrypt' [...]
3. Logged out from ssh, run npm info bcrypt | grep "version:", it returned "0.8.5"
4. Added entry "bcrypt":"~0.8.5" to my package.json and commited/pushed changes.
5. Problem solved, app runs!

Answer 2

The error turned out to be a generic error that had nothing to do with the port. Apparently, if there is any fatal javascript error, it gives this message.