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 a hosted service such as Airbrake.

Mailing List

Join the Google Group at https://groups.google.com/group/errbit to receive updates and notifications.

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.

Set up your local box or server(Ubuntu):

Install MongoDB. Follow the directions here, then:

apt-get update
apt-get install mongodb-10gen

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:

Copy config/deploy.example.rb to config/deploy.rb
Update the deploy.rb or config.yml file with information about your server
Setup server and deploy

cap deploy:setup deploy

(Note: The capistrano deploy script will automatically generate a unique secret token.)

Deploying to Heroku:

Clone the repository

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

Update db/seeds.rb with admin credentials for your initial login.
Create & configure for Heroku

gem install heroku
heroku create example-errbit --stack cedar
heroku addons:add mongolab:sandbox
heroku addons:add sendgrid:starter
heroku config:add HEROKU=true
heroku config:add SECRET_TOKEN="$(bundle exec rake secret)"
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 run 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"

You may also want to configure a different secret token for each deploy:

heroku config:add SECRET_TOKEN=some-secret-token

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.

GitHub authentication when served on Heroku

You will need to set up Heroku variables accordingly as described in Configuring GitHub authentication:

GITHUB_AUTHENTICATION

heroku config:add GITHUB_AUTHENTICATION=true

GITHUB_CLIENT_ID

heroku config:add GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=the_client_id_provided_by_GitHub

GITHUB_SECRET

heroku config:add GITHUB_SECRET=the_secret_provided_by_GitHub

GITHUB_ACCESS_SCOPE - set only one scope repo or public_repo. If you really need to put more than one, separate them with comma.

heroku config:add GITHUB_ACCESS_SCOPE=repo,public_repo

Note: To avoid restarting your Heroku app 4 times you can set Heroku variables in a single command, i.e:

heroku config:add GITHUB_AUTHENTICATION=true \
GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=the_client_id_provided_by_GitHub \
GITHUB_SECRET=the_secret_provided_by_GitHub \
GITHUB_ACCESS_SCOPE=repo,public_repo

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.
Ensure to set config.ldap_create_user = true in config/initializers/devise.rb, this enables creating the users from LDAP, otherwhise login will not work.
Create a new initializer (e.g. config/initializers/devise_ldap.rb) and add the following code to enable ldap authentication in the User-model:
```
Errbit::Config.devise_modules << :ldap_authenticatable
```
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

Now login with your user from LDAP, this will create a user in the database
Open a rails console and set the admin flag for your user:

user = User.first
user.admin = true
user.save!

Upgrading

When upgrading Errbit, please run:

git pull origin master # assuming origin is the github.com/errbit/errbit repo
bundle install
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:

User details tab

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

Adding javascript errors notifications

Errbit easily supports javascript errors notifications. You just need to add config.js_notifier = true to the errbit initializer in the rails app.

Errbit.configure do |config|
  config.host    = 'YOUR-ERRBIT-HOST'
  config.api_key = 'YOUR-PROJECT-API-KEY'
  config.js_notifier = true
end

Then get the notifier.js from errbit/public/javascript/notifier.js and add to application.js on your rails app or inlcude http://YOUR-ERRBIT-HOST/javascripts/notifier.js on your application.html.erb.

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!)

Bitbucket Issues Integration

For ‘BITBUCKET REPO’ field, 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 Bitbucket account.

Gitlab Issues Integration

Account is the host of your gitlab installation. i.e. http://gitlab.example.com
To authenticate, Errbit uses token-based authentication. Get your API Key in your user settings (or create special user for this purpose)
You also need to provide project ID (it needs to be Number) for issues to be created

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.

Use Errbit with applications written in other languages

In theory, any Airbrake-compatible error catcher for other languages should work with Errbit. Solutions known to work are listed below:

PHP (>= 5.3)	https://github.com/flippa/errbit-php
Python	https://github.com/mkorenkov/errbit.py , https://github.com/pulseenergy/airbrakepy

Develop on Errbit

A guide can help on this way on Errbit Advanced Developer Guide

TODO

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

People using Errbit

See our wiki page for a list of people and companies around the world who use Errbit. Feel free to edit this page, and add your name and country to the list if you are using Errbit.

Special Thanks

Michael Parenteau - For rocking the Errbit design and providing a great user experience.
Nick Recobra (@oruen) - Nick is Errbit’s first core contributor. He’s been working hard at making Errbit more awesome.
Nathan Broadbent (@ndbroadbent) - Maintaining Errbit and contributing many features
Vasiliy Ermolovich (@nashby) - Contributing and helping to resolve issues and pull requests
Marcin Ciunelis (@martinciu) - Helping to improve Errbit’s architecture
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.

See the contributors graph for further details.

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.