Trouble Shooting

After a recent change in the github.com/gorilla/sessions Buffalo applications will fail to start with the error securecookie: hash key is not set. To fix this you must set an environment variable named SESSION_SECRET.

For information see https://github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo/issues/1067

If executing buffalo --help or any other command from the terminal takes longer than expected set export BUFFALO_PLUGIN_PATH=$GOPATH/bin in your shell config (e.g. .bash_profile).

If you can't find the buffalo binary after a successful installation, this is problably caused because $GOPATH/bin, or %GOPATH\bin (Windows), isn't in your $PATH variable. When a Go binary is installed it is placed in $GOPATH/bin. Adding this to your global $PATH will allow you to find any Go binary everywhere in your system. See https://golang.org/doc/code.html#GOPATH for more details.

This happens because the buffalo new command cannot find the templates it needs to generate a new application.

There are a couple of things that could cause this issue.

• Using multiple $GOPATHs. This can happen when you install Buffalo to one $GOPATH and then create a new, temporary, $GOPATH and try to create a new application there. Because the templates are in the first, original $GOPATH, the installer does not find them, and subsequently generates an incomplete application. To fix this, use just one $GOPATH.
• Using a single $GOPATH. If you aren't using multiple $GOPATHs and are still seeing this issue, it is most likely caused by a bad installation. Run $ go get -u -v github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo/buffalo again, and it should, hopefully, repair the installation for you.

The original ticket for this issue can be found at https://github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo/issues/629.

This is caused by incorrectly setup Node/NPM installation. See docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions for information on how to fix this issue.

This is caused by the fsnotify package not supporting NFS. See github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo/issues/620 for more details and a workaround.

This is caused by a mismatched $GOPATH and file system.

GOPATH: /Users/foobar/Documents/Programming/Go
ACTUAL: /Users/foobar/Documents/programming/go

Those are not the same and cause problems with a lot of Go tools. Correct the $GOPATH to match the file system and retry.

This is caused by an outdated copy of the github.com/motemen/gore package. To fix simply update gore:

$ go get -u github.com/motemen/gore

For information see https://github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo/issues/108 and https://github.com/motemen/gore/issues/63.

When starting $ buffalo dev, and you encounter this error:

There was a problem starting the dev server: Unknown, Please review the troubleshooting docs.

This may be due to your system missing NodeJS/NPM, Ensure that Node/NPM is installed and is in your $PATH. If Node/NPM are indeed in your $PATH, try renaming webpack.config.js.

If you are still having issues after attempting the steps above, please reach out to the community in the #buffalo channel on Gophers Slack.

When trying to install Buffalo go get returns this error:

package context: unrecognized import path "context" (import path does not begin with hostname)

This is due to an outdated version of Go. Buffalo requires Go 1.7 or higher. Please check your installation of Go and ensure you running the latest version.

Occasionally when running go get on Buffalo you will get the following error:

unexpected directory layout:
import path: github.com/mattn/go-colorable
dir: /go/src/github.com/fatih/color/vendor/github.com/mattn/go-colorable
expand dir: /go/src/github.com/fatih/color/vendor/github.com/mattn/go-colorable
separator: /

This issue has been reported previously the Go team, github.com/golang/go/issues/17597.

The best way to solve this problem is to run go get again, and it seems to fix itself.

If you get this error when running buffalo build you need to update your webpack.config.js to work with https://github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo/pull/350/files.

This is a known issue with Go, github.com/golang/go/issues/19734, not with Buffalo.

The best solution is to upgrade to Go 1.8.1, or greater, and rebuild your Go binaries.

If you get this error when running buffalo dev that means you are "watching" too many files, either .go files or asset files. To correct this you can change the maximum number of open files on your system.

The full error may appear something like the following, and seems to be the result of outdated go tools. To resolve run rm -r $GOPATH/src/golang.org/, then run go get again.

$ buffalo new myapp

--> go get -u golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports
package golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports: golang.org/x/tools is a custom import path for https://go.googlesource.com/tools, but /Users/foo/go/src/golang.org/x/tools is checked out from https://code.google.com/p/go.tools

Error: exit status 1

You might see errors similar to this when you build:

buffalo: 2018/01/19 20:58:47 === Error! ===
buffalo: 2018/01/19 20:58:47 === exit status 2
path/path/models
path/path/actions
# path/path/actions
actions/app.go:17:2: gothic redeclared as imported package name
    previous declaration at actions/app.go:15:2
actions/app.go:66:36: undefined: AuthCallback
actions/app.go:67:11: undefined: SetCurrentUser
actions/app.go:68:11: undefined: Authorize
actions/app.go:69:23: undefined: Authorize

This could be because the goth plugin isn't able to find the templates for the different providers. This can happen when the goth plugin is available in $PATH, but the project isn't in your current $GOPATH.

To fix it, you can either go get -u github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo-goth in your project's $GOPATH or use dep.