railway shell
immediately closes (trying to run 
createsuperuser
for Django Project)

danielhardej
PRO

5 months ago

Hi team!

I'm having trouble accessing the shell for my Django server via the railway shell CLI command: https://docs.railway.com/reference/cli-api#shell

I've logged in, linked to the project, selected the service, and it seems to open the shell but then closes after just a couple of seconds without doing anything else:

****@MacBookPro ~ % railway shell                                                    
Entering subshell with Railway variables available. Type 'exit' to exit.

****@MacBookPro ~ %

For some context, this comes up as I'm trying to add an admin user to my Django

App deployment wity: python manage.py createsuperuser

I've also tried the railway run CLI command with railway run python manage.py createsuperuser, but I then just get:

***@MacBookPro ~ % railway run python manage.py createsuperuser                    
No such file or directory (os error 2)
Solved

4 Replies

brody
EMPLOYEE

5 months ago

Hello,

You would indeed be in the shell, it is a local shell so it's going to use the same shell process as the parent shell.

Same with railway run it runs commands locally with the linked service variables available, so you would need python installed locally and run the commands from within your project folder.

https://docs.railway.com/reference/cli-api#shell

https://docs.railway.com/reference/cli-api#run

Best,
Brody

Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • 6 months ago

danielhardej
PRO

5 months ago

Hey Brody, thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

Apologies if I'm being a little slow with understanding: so railway shell will only let you run a shell locally with the same environment variables used in the app you've deployed, but not a shell on the actual server being used to host that app on Railway - is that correct?

What I'm looking for is something similar to using an admin console or SSH on the actual app server. Is that possible?

Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • 5 months ago

brody
EMPLOYEE

5 months ago

Hello,

That is correct! local only shell with your service variables available.

Unfortunately we do not provide a way for you to get a shell into a deployment... yet, but it is planned to be released by the end of the current quarter!

Please upvote this thread so that you can be notified when we ship the feature! -

https://help.railway.com/feedback/allow-ssh-access-to-containers-via-cli-e4985f6f

Best,

Brody

Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • 5 months ago

danielhardej
PRO

5 months ago

Thanks Brody.

but it is planned to be released by the end of the current quarter!

That's awesome to hear. This'd be super useful.

PS. For anyone else reading this and wondering how to use the python manage.py createsuperuser --no-input command for their Django app in the meantime, I found two workarounds. Either:

  1. Add it to the Pre-deploy Command under the app server settings, ensuring you set the super user credentials as environment variables on your app server

  2. Add it to the start command string in your railway.json file (also making sure you set your env variables)

heart1

Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • 5 months ago

Status changed to Solved brody • 5 months ago

`railway shell` immediately closes (trying to run `createsuperuser` for Django Project) - Railway Help Station