Hello and happy Monday!
For my friends finding out about Lifeboat for the first time, I have been working to simplify the deploy process for Xojo Web apps. My goal is to help everyone who wants to make a web app get up and running 
In my time between projects these past couple of weeks I have been tweaking the way we use Lifeboat. Iāve separated out domain and subdomain management from web app management. This change prepares for a future update implementing static file serving.
I plan to update the tutorial videos (and add more!) as I get closer to a release. I wanted to get this update available before we got too comfortable in the previous backend schema. This version was designed with the future in mind and should be the only time an update wonāt happen automatically.
Hereās whatās new in Build 27
New: Connection validation now prevents duplicates
New: Disconnect timeout to close ssh-helper process
New: Lifeboat can identify pre-configured servers
New: Help Menu > Flush DNS Cache tool
Fixed: Server window no longer grows infinitely as it switches views on Windows
Fixed: Rare NilObjectException caused by closing windows
Fixed: Status label now allows for longer filenames
Fixed: Exceptions in the helper app no longer immediately close the server window
Changed: More logging, everywhere!
Changed: Can no longer delete a connection while itās open
Changed: Improved Windows menu system
Changed: nginx logs are now organized by domain
More information:
Downloads:
https://strawberrysw.com/lifeboat/get/mac
https://strawberrysw.com/lifeboat/get/windows
Best wishes,
Tim Parnell
6 Likes
Cool! This gets even better!
Having now installed the new Build 27, Lifeboat has re-installed on server, but old settings have all been wiped out due to new database schema. Therefore the new Lifeboat has no knowledge of previous domains / sub-domains or previously uploaded Xojo test webapps.
Should I delete my existing webapp folders off the server and start again, or can I simply upload the same test apps to the same sub-domains in order to āre-writeā the new database??
Iāll have to make this process smoother in the future. If you want to use the same configuration, yes you can rebuild it. If you use the same web app name the upload system can even locate the existing copy and speed up the deploy.
Ooops. I think I broke something. So I re-added the previous sub-domain, and then re-uploaded the same test app. That all seemed to proceed smoothly, but the app status shows as āInactiveā and if I click Start, the status momentarily shows āTransitioningā - then falls back to āInactiveā
However, if I ssh in to the server and call $ps - I can see my app listed as a running process! And if I browse to the sub-domain URL the app attempts to load but shows the default Xojo error dialog (Something about āCould not execute returned javascript:ā)
Letās take a look, send me the logs via private message or email. You can right click on the app thatās failing and select āView Logsā¦ā to get them.
Thanks Tim,
It was difficult to improve its functionality and you have succeeded. Downloading build 27, fantastic. By the way, do you have a roadmap planned?. You know I told you about the idea of supporting Debian and I donāt know if you have an estimation of when lifeboat will support it.
By the way, I take this opportunity to ask you, would it be possible to use the raspberry pi to host the web 2.0 applications through lifeboat?. I imagine that in its 32 bits version it is not worth it but maybe when Xojo supports ARM64 it would be a good idea. What do you think about that possibility?.
Thanks, a great job.
Sergio
Hi Sergio,
I donāt have one as organized as I did for ARGen. My current top priorities with this project are static files serving, then supporting Debian. I donāt have a time frame to advertise.
I donāt have a Pi myself and havenāt really looked into that. Once all the requirements are met I would imagine itās possible.
Best wishes,
Tim Parnell
1 Like
My bad! I re-installed a fresh OS and started over - Lifeboat then installed very smoothly and all is working great. Fantastic system! Makes Xojo web deployment (& management) real easy. Love the way it takes care of SSL too - that used to be such a chore.
