Skip to main content

S3 media headers update causes problems during deployment

Support notice 17th November 2020

This notice applies to applications using Aldryn Django only.

S3 media headers update

During the deployment process of Aldryn Django application, Aldryn Django applies a release command to update S3 media headers with the appropriate caching settings. These headers are used by Cloudflare when serving media.

The command is applied by aldryn_config.py.

The problem​

If there are many media files, this process can take long enough that the deployment fails with a timeout.

In such circumstances, the process continues to run, and if a subsequent deployment is initiated, that will also fail, this time immediately and with an unspecified error, for example:

Deployment Error
Error ID: f9dd23d378e8427296e5e4a6238af508

Solution​

In almost all cases, S3 headers update can be disabled, by adding an environment variable to each environment affected:

  • variable: DISABLE_S3_MEDIA_HEADERS_UPDATE
  • value: True

This will cause the deployment process to skip the update.

Implications​

Disable S3 media header updates will only have implications if you have applied custom media caching settings in your own code. In all other cases disabling the update will have no implications.