Trouble connecting to Realm Server on AWS EC2 - swift

Question

I am having trouble connecting to my online Realm on EC2. I've got an EC2 instance running. I've run start-object-server.command. I've pasted the code for my setupRealm() method.
let address = "XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080" // "IPv4 PublicIP" from my EC2 dashboard
var httpURL: URL! { return URL(string: "http://" + address)! }
var realmURL: URL! { return URL(string: "realm://" + address)! }
func setupRealm() {
// My credentials when setting up the Realm admin dashboard after launching realm object server.
let username = "XXXXX#gmail.com"
let password = "XXXX"
let credentials = SyncCredentials.usernamePassword(username: username, password: password)
SyncUser.logIn(with: credentials, server: httpURL) { user, error in
guard let user = user else {
print(String(describing: error!))
return
}
...
}
}
SyncUser.logIn produces this error:
Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1004 "Could not connect to the server."
UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x600000059680 {Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=-1004 "(null)"
UserInfo={_kCFStreamErrorCodeKey=61, _kCFStreamErrorDomainKey=1}},
NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=http://XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080/auth,
NSErrorFailingURLKey=http://XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080/auth, _kCFStreamErrorDomainKey=1, _kCFStreamErrorCodeKey=61,
NSLocalizedDescription=Could not connect to the server.}
I also can't log in to my synced realm using the Realm Browser, though I am able to open local (non-synced) realms from the iOS simulator. And I am running the latest version of Realm Browser.
What's strange is that a week or so ago I was able to connect to the EC2 realm using both my app and the browser, as well as another app that syncs with the realm. I've compared the code and they're basically the same –- any differences I've spotted I am very confident that they don't matter (and I've tried changing some things back, to no avail.)
Since the time it was working, I've installed the recent macOS updates, as well as the Realm 2.5 update. I had some trouble with the realm updates and wound up installing and reinstalling them a few times, but I believe it's working normally, with, again, the latest version of everything. I don't think I changed anything else, I don't remember.
Unfortunately, I actually don't remember my process for setting up the EC2 server -- that is:
I don't think I did anything with AMI's. I don't remember installing any, or anything like that. Although my EC2 instance does have an AMI ID: realm-object-server-hvm-20170309 (ami-d518b9c3). So maybe I did.
I have my keypair in a safe place on my HD, and I think I used it for something at some point...but I don't remember.
I think I used my Public DNS for something at some point...but I don't remember.
What I do remember is:
I didn't use CocoaPods for anything. I dragged in the Realm frameworks and did import RealmSwift (though I have since installed and used CocoaPods for other things and would be fine converting these projects to use CocoaPods)
In the instructions to install Realm Object Server the only thing I did was install the macOS bundle and run start-object-server.command to start the server. I didn't do anything past that. No configuration or security groups or anything. I didn't do any of these because I'm a relative beginner and I don't understand most, if any of it (doing very well with swift but all this terminal code and server stuff is generally over my head). For instance, I don't really understand any of the "Mandatory settings" section, like how to specify settings in the config file, or how to give them as command line arguments.
Similarly, I'm unclear when it's necessary to have the server running in the terminal. I only just realized today that the reason that localhost:9080 sometimes doesn't work is because I'm not running the server.
I'm sure I've done a great many things wrong, but what's strange is that this all used to work, even with all the things I've probably done wrong or left out. I hope someone can help. Thanks a lot.
PS. Here's how the Realm Browser behaves when I try to access my realm in various ways:
(you can see by the number of options I'm trying that I don't really know which is which/which one I'm supposed to use. Again, one of these worked in the past, but I don't remember which)
Open Sync URL, realm://XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080/~/ gives the "Please provide valid credentials to access this Realm" dialog. And I am pretty damn sure I'm entering the correct credentials.
Open Sync URL, http://XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080/~/ leaves the "Connect" button disabled
Connect to Object Server, realm://XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080/ gives "Could not connect to the server."
Connect to Object Server, http://XX.YYY.ZZZ.AA:9080/ leaves the "Connect" button disabled

Answer 1

I've got an EC2 instance running. I've run
start-object-server.command.
start-object-server.command is for running local instances of the Realm Object Server; the ones accessible via http://localhost:9080. You might need to be careful since if you're running a local instance of ROS locally, as well as trying to connect to one remotely on AWS, there might be some confusion as to which server you ended up talking to. :)
I've pasted the code for my setupRealm() method.
That code looks correct. Just remember that if you ran start-object-server.command, you would have been presented with the localhost instance of ROS automatically, so those credentials wouldn't exist on your EC2 instance at present.
I also can't log in to my synced realm using the Realm Browser, though I am able to open local (non-synced) realms from the iOS simulator. And I am running the latest version of Realm Browser.
That's normal behavior. You can open local Realm files in the Browser, but for ones created with the Realm Mobile Platform, you'll need to connect to them; you cannot open them directly. If you can't connect to a Realm, that either means the Realm Mobile Platform isn't running, or isn't configured for the right URLs properly.
I had a play with setting up my own EC2 instance, and I got it working as intended. You can tell if it's working because you should be able to navigate to your public DNS URL with port 9080 and see the Realm Mobile Platform dashboard login page. (eg 'http://ec2-00-000-000-00.compute-1.amazonaws.com:9080').
It's possible that while you set up an EC2 instance, the Realm Mobile Platform itself wasn't installed too. If that's the case, you can easily manually install RMP by connecting to your instance via SSH and running the Ubuntu installation script:
# Setup Realm's PackageCloud repository
curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/realm/realm/script.deb.sh | sudo bash
# Update the repositories
sudo apt-get update
# Install the Realm Object Server
sudo apt-get install realm-object-server-developer
# Enable and start the service
sudo systemctl enable realm-object-server
sudo systemctl start realm-object-server
But the crux of the matter is that you need to confirm you can access your Realm Mobile Platform dashboard on your EC2 in order to confirm that the Object Server is indeed running, and you've set the proper credentials. Good luck!