On Decemeber 10th, I logged into my website to be greeted by a scary error message

I had not done anything to the site, so I figured something bad more than likely happened.

The work week was busy, so I was not able to start troubleshooting until December 17th. Running the command heroku logs --tail  led to message that stated:

File "/app/my_website/settings.py", line 108, in <module> raise Exception("DATABASE_URL environment variable not defined") Exception: DATABASE_URL environment variable not defined

Reading this, I knew the database had somehow gotten disconnected. Logging into heroku where I host the website and database, I was greeted with a scary red warning label:

At this point, real panic sets in, what happened to my database? I knew that I was paying heroku to host my website, so I thought was just a warning they were putting on all dashboards. At this point, I open up the 10 emails I received from heroku stating that they are removing free hosting and database services. After some research, I realized that I was paying for the server, but not for the database; I was still using the free tier postgres database. 

Tail tucked between my legs, I follow heroku's "hey you dummy, you ignored all of our emails and you want to get your website back" tutorial and within 4 hours of opening a ticket and 9 bucks later, my database was restored.

The take away

DONT IGNORE IMPORTANT EMAILS!

Web Dev

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  • Latest Comments
  • retug on Transfer Diaphragm Design -

    @316Jq, The way I understand, the diaphragm design force (inertia force) per 12.10.1.1 is the inertia force.

    Using the blog example numbers let's say this is 1392 kips.

    The transfer diaphragm force could be estimated to be the delta in shears above and below the transfer level ~ (1500 -  …

  • 316Jq on Transfer Diaphragm Design -

    Just wonder how do you separate inertia force and the transfer force? The inertia force might be controlled by the Fpx,min per ASCE12.10-2,  while the transfer force might need to be multiplied by rho or omega. This is also briefly discussed in NHERP design guidance you used. 

  • retug on Section Cutter - ETABs Plugin -

    Hi Rodrigio, thanks for reaching out.

    My email is retug.austin@gmail.com, feel free to shoot me an email.

    The section cutter tool needs a bit of updating to work with the newer version of ETABs, but happy to discuss what you might have in mind for the add-in.

    Thanks