Set environment variables with AWS Opsworks

Question

I'm using AWS Opsworks to host my Rails App (Ruby 2.0/Rails 3.2). For assets compilation process, I am using AssetSync to upload the compiled assets automatically on S3. I used to store the credentials as environment variables.

Do you have any idea how can I do this with Chef/Opsworks?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I know this is an older post, but I'm posting this in case this helps someone else.

I found the easiest way actually was to use one of Chef's deploy hooks (http://docs.opscode.com/resource_deploy.html#deploy-phases).

Add a directory called 'deploy' at the Rails project root.

In it add a file called before_restart.rb, with the code:

Chef::Log.info("Running deploy/before_restart.rb")

# map the environment_variables node to ENV
node[:deploy].each do |application, deploy|
  deploy[:environment_variables].each do |key, value|
    Chef::Log.info("Setting ENV[#{key}] to #{value}")
    ENV[key] = value
  end
end

When you trigger the OpsWorks deploy, you should be able to see the ENV vars being set in the Rails App Server instance log.

Answer 2

I ended up using https://github.com/joeyAghion/opsworks_custom_env. It works pretty well.