Trouble connecting to supabase

[jvanster]

Description

I followed all the steps to try and connect my survey to supabase, but I'm getting the following error. Any suggestions on what to try? Thanks for any help!
! Failed to connect to the database:
connection to server at "aws-1-us-east-2.pooler.supabase.com"
(3.148.140.216), port 6543 failed: server closed the connection
unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally
before or while processing the request.

[jhelvy]

Hi @jvanster, we added a troubleshooting section on the storing data page. Take a look and let us know if anything works. If not, please give us more details about your specific survey and we can help troubleshoot.

[jvanster]

Thanks, I've double checked all my credentials and it doesn't seem to be that. I went through the troubleshooting and didn't see anything wrong. I've created my survey and was able to deploy it to shiny and it works really well. So the only issue is connecting it to Supabase. I did just get a new MacBook Pro. Is there any other developer tools or anything like that I might need to install? Or do Macs have some security protocols I'm not aware of? I've tried it on a few different networks and it doesn't seem to be that.

[jhelvy]

On a rare occasion we have seen it work if you just fully reboot your computer. It's worth a try.

Can you provide anything else? Maybe your app.R file, any error messages you're getting?

[jvanster]

So I'm trying to connect via the sd_db_connect() in R Studio and here is the message I get.
! Failed to connect to the database:
connection to server at "aws-1-us-east-2.pooler.supabase.com"
(3.131.201.192), port 6543 failed: server closed the connection
unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally
before or while processing the request.
NULL

Here's what my .env file says for the settings (I didn't include my password)

Database connection settings for surveydown

SD_HOST=aws-1-us-east-2.pooler.supabase.com
SD_PORT=6543
SD_DBNAME=postgres
SD_USER=postgres.nfootkducxepvwojiaqz
SD_TABLE=mytable1
SD_PASSWORD=

Any thoughts?

[rciez2125]

I'm getting the same error. I also searched for the error in supabase docs, they flag the possibility that connect_timeout or pool_timeout settings (with too small of values) could lead to issues. That seems plausible, the error does appear very quickly after running the script. I also think it may be happening before sending password information (I changed mine to be intentionally wrong, but got the same error)

[rciez2125]

adjusted a few more settings. I was able to connect by adjusting the gssencmode input value. in my app.R file I have:

db <- sd_db_connect(env_file = ".env", ignore = FALSE, gssencmode = "disable")

[jhelvy]

That was going to be my next suggestion, as noted here. The gssencmode is set to "prefer" by default, but on some networks you need to set it to "disable"

[jvanster]

That totally worked! Thank you so much! I don't think I totally understood what was going on with gssencmode. I deployed the survey and got some data and downloaded it. This tool is amazing as an open source solution for those of us who can't afford qualtrics anymore. Thanks!

[pingfan-hu]

The gssencmode is a decision logic to the GSSAPI, which is a security layer. When the mode is set to "prefer", it will attempt GSSAPI negotiation and uses an SSH layer to protect your connection. To turn it off, we need to set it to "disable".
However, I noticed if I'm using Mac with iCloud VPN, the "prefer" mode will fail the connection. When this happens, I need to switch to "auto". This is a compromise of SSH security, but at least it works.

This is my motivation to create the "auto" mode, which attempts "prefer" first, and falls back to "disable". The only thing is that the fallback didn't work well and that's why this discussion is raised.

I've updated the package and the auto detection should work fine now. Please see my message below and try it out if you got time.

[pingfan-hu]

OK I located the problem. In our design, the gssencmode is default to "auto" which uses "prefer" and falls back to "disable". But the fallback logic was wrong. Now I updated the logic and tested on my own Mac. I successfully triggered the fallback and connected to the database.

Here is the system message:

Initial connection failed, retrying with gssencmode='disable'...
✔ Successfully connected to the database with gssencmode='disable'.

So @jvanster and @rciez2125 , could you do me a favor and try it out? If you have some time, please install this latest version:

pak::pak("surveydown-dev/surveydown@v0.13.4-gssencmode-fix", ask = FALSE)

With this new version, in your app.R file, just call the sd_db_connect() function without specifying gssencmode. Then, see if you can get through.

Thanks!