Deploy to ECS (Docker) troubles - solved

[flo-staysana]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to deploy my blitz app to ECS, so I need to create a Docker Image and push that to ECS. First, I could not find any complete documentation on how to do that with blitzjs, so I am going to summarize my experience for others to follow it. So far I am nearly done and even have got the blitzjs app running on ECS, there is just a "small" issue that I am going to describe further down, that I can not get my head around and I am beginning to go crazy!!!
But first things first, here is what I have done so far:

Step 1: Find the nextjs documentation on how to deploy to docker

I found and used this Dockerfile to get started.
One important change I had to make was in line 11, to change (I am using npm) "npm install" to "npm install --legacy-peer-deps" as I am getting "could not resolve dependency" issues that are impossible to resolve (e.g. blitz needs up to date version of react and node and the pretty old dependencies like @testing-library/react need older version, so there is not one version of react that would satisfy all peer dependencies).
Another change I had to make was to enable "standalone" mode by adding

const config = { output: "standalone" };

module.exports = withBlitz(config);

to next.config.js
See here

But apart from that, it was working quite well but it is missing some blitzjs stuff, which brings me to the next step.

Step 2: Make changes to support prisma

I had to make a couple of changes to include prisma into the Dockerfile as the nextjs template didn't care about that. First I added blitz prisma generate before I would RUN blitz build. And then I had to make sure that blitz prisma migrate deploy is run before the blitz app is started.

With these steps I had a working blitz app running in Docker. BUT it only seemed to work. As soon as I would try to sign up a new user, the app would crash with

npm notice 
npm notice New patch version of npm available! 10.2.3 -> 10.2.4
npm notice Changelog: <https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v10.2.4>
npm notice Run `npm install -g [email protected]` to update!
npm notice 
npm ERR! path /app
npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! signal SIGSEGV
npm ERR! command sh -c node server.js

This is what I can not figure out. I have googled as much as I can. I found an issue related to prisma and postgres (which I am using) but I don't think that is the issue with me. I tried switching to MySql as well as trying the suggested workarounds, no luck. I also found this issue but I also don't think this applies here (and I have also tried the fixes suggested).

So I am looking for anyone that has successfully dockerized a blitzjs app and can share their Dockerfile and step-by-step guide. I don't expect anyone having experienced my SIGSEGV issue but in the rare case, please help me 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Thank you very much,
Florian

[flo-staysana]

This is my complete Dockerfile which I have modified for my needs

FROM node:20.10-alpine AS base

# Install dependencies only when needed
FROM base AS deps
# Check https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/tree/b4117f9333da4138b03a546ec926ef50a31506c3#nodealpine to understand why libc6-compat might be needed.
RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat
WORKDIR /app

# Install dependencies based on the preferred package manager
COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
RUN npm install --legacy-peer-deps

# Rebuild the source code only when needed
FROM base AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=deps /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY . .

ENV NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED 1

RUN npm run prismaGenerate
RUN npm run build

# Production image, copy all the files and run next
FROM base AS runner
WORKDIR /app

ENV NODE_ENV production
ENV NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED 1

RUN addgroup --system --gid 1001 nodejs
RUN adduser --system --uid 1001 nextjs

COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public

# Set the correct permission for prerender cache
RUN mkdir .next
RUN chown nextjs:nodejs .next

# Automatically leverage output traces to reduce image size
# https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/output-file-tracing
COPY --from=builder --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/.next/standalone ./
COPY --from=builder --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/.next/static ./.next/static
# I had to include the below files and folders in order to run "blitz prisma migrate deploy"
COPY --from=builder /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY --from=builder /app/db/migrations ./db/migrations
COPY --from=builder /app/db/schema.prisma ./db/schema.prisma

USER nextjs

EXPOSE 3000

ENV PORT 3000
# set hostname to localhost
ENV HOSTNAME "0.0.0.0"

# server.js is created by next build from the standalone output
# https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/api-reference/next-config-js/output
CMD ["npm", "start"] # <= this runs "blitz prisma migrate deploy && node server.js"

[flo-staysana]

And running "blitz dev" on my local machine works without any issues

[flo-staysana]

It seemed that I had two issues at once, which made this super hard to debug and fix.

1. There seems to be an issue with the Node Alpine docker images, which I still haven't been able to solve. I used Alpine on my local machine as well as deployed it to ECS from github actions and got in both cases the above issue.

2. I also tried a standard node:20 image but got a different segmentation fault when building the image. Thats why I didn't pursue this further at the start and focussed on Alpine images as they at least were able to build. But this was another problem only on my local machine that is described here

After I fixed the issue on my local machine, I could successfully build and run a node:20 image. After deploying to ECS, also there everything was fine 🎉😀

[flo-staysana]

For anyone that is looking for a working Docker Image, here is mine

FROM node:20.10
WORKDIR /app

COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
RUN npm install --legacy-peer-deps

COPY . .

ENV NODE_ENV production
RUN npm run prisma:generate
RUN npm run build

EXPOSE 3000

CMD ["npm", "run", "start:docker"]

with
"prisma:generate": "blitz prisma generate"
"build": "blitz build"
and
"start:docker": "./node_modules/.bin/blitz prisma migrate deploy && ./node_modules/.bin/blitz start"