Errbit

The open source, self-hosted error catcher

Errbit is a tool for collecting and managing errors from other applications. It is Airbrake (formerly known as Hoptoad) API compliant, so if you are already using Airbrake, you can just point the airbrake gem to your Errbit server.

Apps

Errors

Error Summary

Error Backtraces

Errbit may be a good fit for you if:

• Your exceptions may contain sensitive data that you don't want sitting on someone else's server
• Your application is behind a firewall
• You'd like to brand your error catcher
• You want to add customer features to your error catcher
• You're crazy and love managing servers

If this doesn't sound like you, you should probably stick with Airbrake. The Thoughtbot guys offer great support for it and it is much more worry-free. They have a free package and even offer a "Airbrake behind your firewall" solution.

Demo

There is a demo available at http://errbit-demo.herokuapp.com/

Email: demo@errbit-demo.herokuapp.com Password: password

Installation

Note: This app is intended for people with experience deploying and maintining Rails applications. If you're uncomfortable with any step below then Errbit is not for you. Checkout Airbrake from the guys over at Thoughtbot, which Errbit is based on.

Set up your local box or server(Ubuntu):

• Install MongoDB. Follow the directions here, then:

apt-get update
apt-get install mongodb

• Install libxml and libcurl

apt-get install libxml2 libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

• Install Bundler

gem install bundler

Running Locally:

• Install dependencies

bundle install

• Bootstrap Errbit. This will copy over config.yml and also seed the database.

rake errbit:bootstrap

• Update the config.yml and mongoid.yml files with information about your environment

• Start Server

script/rails server

Deploying:

• Bootstrap Errbit. This will copy over config.yml and also seed the database.

rake errbit:bootstrap

• Update the deploy.rb file with information about your server
• Setup server and deploy

cap deploy:setup deploy

Deploying to Heroku:

• Clone the repository

git clone http://github.com/errbit/errbit.git

• Create & configure for Heroku

gem install heroku
heroku create example-errbit --stack cedar
heroku addons:add mongohq:free
cp -f config/mongoid.mongohq.yml config/mongoid.yml
git add -f config/mongoid.yml
git commit -m "Added mongoid config for MongoHQ"
heroku addons:add sendgrid:starter
heroku config:add HEROKU=true
heroku config:add ERRBIT_HOST=some-hostname.example.com
heroku config:add ERRBIT_EMAIL_FROM=example@example.com
git push heroku master

• Seed the DB (NOTE: No bootstrap task is used on Heroku!)

heroku run rake db:seed

• If you are using a free database on Heroku, you may want to periodically clear resolved errors to free up space.

  • With the heroku-scheduler add-on (replacement for cron):

  # Install the heroku scheduler add-on
  heroku addons:add scheduler:standard
  
  # Go open the dashboard to schedule the job.  You should use
  # 'rake errbit:db:clear_resolved' as the task command, and schedule it
  # at whatever frequency you like (once/day should work great).
  heroku addons:open scheduler

  • With the cron add-on:

  # Install the heroku cron addon, to clear resolved errors daily:
  heroku addons:add cron:daily

  • Or clear resolved errors manually:

  heroku rake errbit:db:clear_resolved

• You may want to enable the deployment hook for heroku :

heroku addons:add deployhooks:http url="http://YOUR_ERRBIT_HOST/deploys.txt?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

• Enjoy!

Authentication

Configuring GitHub authentication:

• In config/config.yml, set github_authentication to true
• Register your instance of Errbit at: https://github.com/settings/applications

If you hosted Errbit at errbit.example.com, you would fill in:

URL:	http://errbit.example.com/
Callback URL:	http://errbit.example.com/users/auth/github

• After you have registered your app, set github_client_id and github_secret in config/config.yml with your app's Client ID and Secret key.

After you have followed these instructions, you will be able to Sign in with GitHub on the Login page.

You will also be able to link your GitHub profile to your user account on your Edit profile page.

If you have signed in with GitHub, or linked your GitHub profile, and the App has a GitHub repo configured, then you will be able to create issues on GitHub. You will still be able to create an issue on the App's configured issue tracker.

You can change the requested account permissions by setting github_access_scope to:

['repo']	Allow creating issues for public and private repos.
['public_repo']	Only allow creating issues for public repos.
[]	No permission to create issues on any repos.

Configuring LDAP authentication:

• In config/config.yml, set user_has_username to true

• Follow the instructions at https://github.com/cschiewek/devise_ldap_authenticatable to set up the devise_ldap_authenticatable gem.

• If you are authenticating by username, you will need to set the user's email manually before authentication. You must add the following lines to app/models/user.rb:

  before_save :set_ldap_email
  def set_ldap_email
    self.email = Devise::LdapAdapter.get_ldap_param(self.username, "mail")
  end

Upgrading

When upgrading Errbit, please run:

git pull origin master # assuming origin is the github.com/errbit/errbit repo
rake db:migrate

If we change the way that data is stored, this will run any migrations to bring your database up to date.

User information in error reports

Errbit can now display information about the user who experienced an error. This gives you the ability to ask the user for more information, and let them know when you've fixed the bug.

If you would like to include information about the current user in your error reports, you can replace the airbrake gem in your Gemfile with airbrake_user_attributes, which wraps the airbrake gem and injects user information. It will inject information about the current user into the error report if your Rails app's controller responds to a #current_user method. The user's attributes are filtered to remove authentication fields.

If user information is received with an error report, it will be displayed under the User Details tab:

(This tab will be hidden if no user information is available.)

Issue Trackers

Lighthouseapp Integration

• Account is the name of your subdomain, i.e. litcafe for project at http://litcafe.lighthouseapp.com/projects/73466-face/overview
• Errbit uses token-based authentication. Get your API Token or visit http://help.lighthouseapp.com/kb/api/how-do-i-get-an-api-token to learn how to get it.
• Project id is number identifier of your project, i.e. 73466 for project at http://litcafe.lighthouseapp.com/projects/73466-face/overview

Redmine Integration

• Account is the host of your redmine installation, i.e. http://redmine.org
• Errbit uses token-based authentication. Get your API Key or visit http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Rest_api#Authentication to learn how to get it.
• Project id is an identifier of your project, i.e. chilliproject for project at http://www.redmine.org/projects/chilliproject

Pivotal Tracker Integration

• Errbit uses token-based authentication. Get your API Key or visit http://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/api to learn how to get it.
• Project id is an identifier of your project, i.e. 24324 for project at http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/24324

Thoughtworks Mingle Integration

• Account is the host of your mingle installation. i.e. https://mingle.example.com note: You should use SSL if possible.
• Errbit uses 'sign-in name' & password authentication. You may want to set up an errbit user with limited rights.
• Project id is the identifier of your project, i.e. awesomeapp for project at https://mingle.example.com/projects/awesomeapp
• Card properties are comma separated key value pairs. You must specify a 'card_type', but anything else is optional, e.g.:

card_type = Defect, status = Open, priority = Essential

GitHub Issues Integration

• For 'Account/Repository', the account will either be a username or organization. i.e. errbit/errbit
• You will also need to provide your username and password for your GitHub account.
  • (We'd really appreciate it if you wanted to help us implement OAuth instead!)

What if Errbit has an error?

Errbit will log it's own errors to an internal app named Self.Errbit. The Self.Errbit app will be automatically created whenever the first error happens.

If your Errbit instance has logged an error, we would appreciate a bug report on GitHub Issues. You can post this manually at https://github.com/errbit/errbit/issues, or you can set up the GitHub Issues tracker for your Self.Errbit app:

• Go to the Self.Errbit app's edit page. If that app does not exist yet, go to the apps page and click Add a new App to create it. (You can also create it by running rake airbrake:test.)

• In the Issue Tracker section, click GitHub Issues.

• Fill in the Account/Repository field with errbit/errbit.

• Fill in the Username field with your github username.

• If you are logged in on GitHub, you can find your API Token on this page: https://github.com/account/admin.

• Save the settings by clicking Update App (or Add App)

• You can now easily post bug reports to GitHub Issues by clicking the Create Issue button on a Self.Errbit error.

TODO

• Add ability for watchers to be configured for types of notifications they should receive

Special Thanks

• Michael Parenteau - For rocking the Errbit design and providing a great user experience.
• Nick Recobra aka oruen - Nick is Errbit's first core contributor. He's been working hard at making Errbit more awesome.
• Relevance - For giving me Open-source Fridays to work on Errbit and all my awesome co-workers for giving feedback and inspiration.
• Thoughtbot - For being great open-source advocates and setting the bar with Airbrake.

Contributing

We welcome any contributions. If you need to tweak Errbit for your organization's needs, there are probably other users who will appreciate your work. Please try to determine whether or not your feature should be global or optional, and make optional features configurable via config/config.yml.

Examples of optional features:

• Enable / disable user comments on errors.
• Adding a username field to the User model.

How to contribute:

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so we don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with Rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself we can ignore when we pull)
• Send us a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010-2011 Jared Pace. See LICENSE for details.