quantum-ai/EMERGENCY_STARTUP_FIX.md

🚨 Emergency Railway Startup Fix

Issue: Service Unavailable (Django Not Starting)

We've regressed from 400 Bad Request (Django running) back to "service unavailable" (app not starting). This is likely an environment variable issue.

🔧 IMMEDIATE FIXES TO TRY

Fix 1: Minimal Environment Variables

Set ONLY these in Railway Variables:

SECRET_KEY=your-50-character-secret-key
DEBUG=False
ALLOWED_HOSTS=*

Remove all other variables temporarily

Fix 2: Check ALLOWED_HOSTS Syntax

Bad (causes crash):

ALLOWED_HOSTS=*.railway.app, quantumtaskai.com  # NO SPACES
ALLOWED_HOSTS="*.railway.app,quantumtaskai.com"  # NO QUOTES

Good:

ALLOWED_HOSTS=*.railway.app,quantumtaskai.com
# OR for debugging:
ALLOWED_HOSTS=*

Fix 3: Generate New SECRET_KEY

The SECRET_KEY might be invalid:

# Generate new one:
python -c "from django.core.management.utils import get_random_secret_key; print(get_random_secret_key())"

# Set in Railway:
SECRET_KEY=django-insecure-your-new-key-here

🚀 Deployment Strategy

Step 1: Minimal railway.json (DONE)

• Removed health check
• Removed collectstatic
• Bare minimum startup

Step 2: Set Minimal Variables

SECRET_KEY=your-generated-key
DEBUG=False  
ALLOWED_HOSTS=*

Step 3: Deploy and Test

git add .
git commit -m "Emergency fix - minimal config"
git push origin main

Step 4: Check Direct Access

# Once deployed, test direct access:
curl https://your-railway-domain.railway.app/
# Should return HTML page, not connection error

🔍 Debug Commands

Check Railway Logs

railway logs --tail 50

Look for these errors:

• ImproperlyConfigured: The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty
• ImproperlyConfigured: You must set settings.ALLOWED_HOSTS
• ModuleNotFoundError
• ImportError
• Address already in use

Check Variables

railway variables

📊 Success Indicators

✅ App Starting

• Railway logs show: Starting gunicorn
• No Python errors in logs
• Direct URL access works (returns HTML)

✅ Ready for Health Check

Once basic startup works, we can add back:

{
  "deploy": {
    "startCommand": "gunicorn netcop_hub.wsgi:application --bind 0.0.0.0:$PORT",
    "healthcheckPath": "/health/",
    "healthcheckTimeout": 30
  }
}

🎯 Goal

Get back to where Django was at least starting (even with 400 error), then fix the ALLOWED_HOSTS properly.

The issue is likely in environment variable syntax or SECRET_KEY format.