About

This project enable any one to deploy one Riak Server into the Heroku plateform.

Install

Choice #1 - fast install button

Choice #2 - heroku toolbelt and git install....

See this wiki page

How I have works on that subjects

About Heroku

Heroku is polyglot and use buildpacks to build what ever application we design to run on their servers.

Behind Heroku dynos are a Ubuntu stack (a set of software selected by Heroku team that will run the server). The Cedar-14 Heroku stack is an Ubundu Trusty version.

To get the ubuntu version of the stack of your current application, run this (you will need heroku toolbelt) :

$ heroku run "lsb_release -a"
Running `lsb_release -a` attached to terminal... up, run.3146
Detected 512 MB available memory, 512 MB limit per process (WEB_MEMORY)
Recommending WEB_CONCURRENCY=1
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS
Release:        14.04
Codename:       trusty

From a terminal with apt-get

My first idea to install Riak was to use apt-get to but I fail doing it from an Heroku terminal.

Compile from source

Hence, I change my mind and wanted to build everything from source: building Basho's Erlang and Riak. But I was facing writing issue and build timeout. Each time you deploy on Heroku, your project source is build from source. The build phase is limited to 15 minutes.

Heroku support team told me to try both Erlang and Multi buildpack. The first one will install a standard Erlang distribution and the second one enable you to use multiple others buildpack for anything else.

With Heroku buildpack

I decided to give a try to the multi buildpack and to two others ones : heroku-buildpack-apt and heroku-buildpack-dpkg. That was the good solution.

For the purpose of depolying Riak on it, I use severals buildbacks:

• the multi buildpack so I can the use severals other buildback. Other buildpacks are set into the file .buildpacks

• heroku-buildpack-apt enable the use of apt-get to install components into Heroku. For that purpose you write into the file Aptfile all the name of the component you want to install

• heroku-buildpack-dpkg enable the use of dpkg to install components into Heroku. For that purpose you write into the file Depfile all the URLs of the component you want to download and install

• heroku-buildpack-nodejs enable to deploy a node.js application I use node.js to

  • start, stop and ping Riak server.
  • to have a post install feature to post install riak. In the node.js package.json file, you can define a set of scripts that will define a deployement lifecycle.

Steps

Deployement steps are :

• deploy with apt-get
• deploy with dpkg
• deploy a node.

The heroku-buildpack-apt install everything into the folder /.apt. The heroku-buildpack-dpkg install everything into the folder /.dpkg.

Nothing is installed into the / root folder. However, some riak files settings are relative to the root folder.

Hence I have to change some scripts and configuration file.

I have changed the following files:

file	path	Description
riak	~/.dpkg/usr/sbin/riak	Riak run script
env.sh	~/.dpkg/usr/lib/riak/lib/env.sh	Riak environement script
riak.conf	~/.dpkg/etc/riak/riak.conf	Riak configuration file

I have uploaded thoses 3 files above into the folder riak_script to customize them to fits Heroku requirements. The bash script setup_riak.sh deploy the modified files at the end of the deployment process.

Each file located into .profile.d folder are executed before the application is started. At Heroku, only one HTTP port is accessible from the outside. The environement variable $PORT is set to have this value. This HTTP port can change from time to time. So, before each Riak startup, we must change the configuration file to fit that need.

I have put a script (z00_setup_riak.sh) to change the HTTP listener port. Riak must bind the local address 0.0.0.0:$PORT The script name start with 'z00' so I have good change it is the last file started among all others installed during the deploy phase. Actually, its seems there are one file for each buildpack use.

Content of the project

.profile.d/			folder	script to be executed before starting Riak
.riak_script/		folder	script and configuration file from Riak adapted to suite Heroku instakll
.buildpacks			file	list all buildpack to execute
.env				file	list of environement variable _not usefull now_
.gitignore			file	list files to be ignored by GIT
app.json			file	Application descriptor to deploy the it on Heroku
Aptfile             file	list all dependencies to install with apt-get
Debfile             file    list all URLs to download and install with <code>dpkg</code>
package.json        file	node.js application descriptor (start, ping and stop Riak)
Procfile    		file	file that describe each process to launch. [More details here](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile)
README.md			file	this file
run_riak.js			file	Main file that will [start](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos#startup), ping, and [stop](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos#shutdown) Riak
setup_riak.sh		file	deploy Riak script for Heroku
TODO.md				file	list things to do.

TODO

• change other script to fits Heroku
  • riak-admin