Node JS app on OpenShift gives error 503 - node.js

Question

So I created a NodeJS app for a college project which monitors page loading speed. In order to record said speed I need people to go to the web application, go to a certain page and hit a button a couple of times.
So I looked up a way to host this app, free of charge, and came up with OpenShift.
After figuring out how it all worked I managed to setup an OpenShift git-repository and I am able to push my changes to the server.
However upon visiting my page I kept getting error 503. Initially I thought it was a node modules error so I found npm shrinkwrap which solved npm version issues. The error, is still around.
When I run the app locally, I get no errors whatsoever and all modules are installed correctly. They are also in a package.json file (I used npm install --save for all my modules, so no manual editing was performed).
These are the first couple of lines from using the tail-command and whopping the result into a text file.
==> app-root/logs/nodejs.log <==
at Connection.connect (/var/lib/openshift/550db5624382ecf8f400000f/app>root/runtime/repo/node_modules/mysql/lib/Connection.js:109:18)
at Object.<anonymous> (/var/lib/openshift/550db5624382ecf8f400000f/approot/runtime/repo/server.js:28:12)
at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:497:10)
at startup (node.js:119:16)
DEBUG: Program node server.js exited with code 8
DEBUG: Starting child process with 'node server.js'
I also found this:
==> app-root/logs/nodejs.log <==
Error: connect ECONNREFUSED
at errnoException (net.js:901:11)
at Object.afterConnect [as oncomplete] (net.js:892:19)
--------------------
at Protocol._enqueue (/var/lib/openshift/550db5624382ecf8f400000f/app-root/runtime/repo/node_modules/mysql/lib/protocol/Protocol.js:135:48)
at Protocol.handshake (/var/lib/openshift/550db5624382ecf8f400000f/app-root/runtime/repo/node_modules/mysql/lib/protocol/Protocol.js:52:41)
at Connection.connect (/var/lib/openshift/550db5624382ecf8f400000f/app-root/runtime/repo/node_modules/mysql/lib/Connection.js:109:18)
at Object.<anonymous> (/var/lib/openshift/550db5624382ecf8f400000f/app-root/runtime/repo/server.js:28:12)
at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:497:10)
at startup (node.js:119:16)
DEBUG: Program node server.js exited with code 8
Any idea's?

Answer 1

Mine did the same when I first pushed to OpenShift. I think I had to review some references and make some slight changes. My log on OpenShift indicated that such-and-such file couldn't be found. Yours might, too, if you review the entire thing.
For example, this is the "after" version of something I edited:
self.app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
I might have had just this before:
self.app.set('views', '/views');
Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Well... you've got...
Error: connect ECONNREFUSED
...which suggests that Express couldn't connect to the database. Maybe you've got dev versus prod credentials going on and the code's trying to use the local credentials, the local database name, the local username, the local server, etc.
I'm using MongoDB (no credentials locally) and have created a /db.js file to store all that. And then my /server.js selects which variable:
if (typeof process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_IP === "undefined") { mongoose.connect(dbConfig.devurl); } else { mongoose.connect(dbConfig.produrl); }
Note the two different variables after dbConfig.varname.