fly deploy to false "remote builder app unavailable"

[greg]

Hi,

Regarding

Firstly, I want to highlight that my application is hosted in the Tokyo region. However, while running the fly deploy command, I noticed that the logs indicate the builder is located in Hong Kong (hkg)

… that is expected. If using a remote builder, that will generally run close to you rather than close to the chosen region being deployed to:

Remote builder regions

The release_command actually runs one single instance of your app, not the remote builder. This will run in the same region your app runs in. The remote builder is actually a Docker daemon we run for you. It’s better if that runs close to where you are. If you’re in spain, the builder app running in madrid will get you the best app build performance. Does that make sense?

You would normally want that. If it’s an issue you could either:

a) build locally and avoid using it at all (by doing fly deploy --local-only). ~Assuming you have Docker running locally
b) try and move the remote builder somewhere else, by moving its volume (which in turn pins the app). I vaguely recall people mentioning dong that … but I don’t think that is officially supported so I wouldn’t

As for the

Could you provide more information on the recommended approach for handling sensitive environment variables

… yep, any secrets should not be in fly.toml. Things like passwords and API keys should instead be stored encrypted using the command: fly secrets set NAME=VALUE.

For more, see:

fly secrets set

That will still make them available to your app as environment variables, but will store them securely and avoid revealing them in plain text.

The logs of the builder would be more useful to Fly’s people for debugging. Like I say, a workaround is to avoid using it at all and build locally, at least for now. Docker is free to download and install for personal/small companies if you don’t already have it.