"Connection refused" when creating Elastic Beanstalk environment - mysql

Question

I'm following this tutorial to set up Laravel on an Elastic Beanstalk environment:
https://deliciousbrains.com/scaling-laravel-using-aws-elastic-beanstalk-part-3-setting-elastic-beanstalk/
I've gone through it twice on a completely fresh install of Laravel just to see if it works, and it worked both times.
Now, I've gone through it again, but this time on my main Laravel project. I've double checked everything in the tutorial, and I'm confident that I didn't miss anything.
However, when I create the environment using this command from the tutorial (with the values filled in of course):
eb create --vpc.id {VPCID} --vpc.elbpublic --vpc.elbsubnets {VPCELBSUBNETS} --vpc.ec2subnets {VPCEC2SUBNETS} --vpc.securitygroups {VPCSG}
I get the following output error:
Printing Status:
INFO: createEnvironment is starting.
INFO: Using elasticbeanstalk-us-east-1-487650495335 as Amazon S3 storage bucket for environment data.
INFO: Created security group named: sg-018fe470
INFO: Created load balancer named: awseb-e-7-AWSEBLoa-1M3V7HA824OQ0
INFO: Created security group named: sg-7489ec08
INFO: Environment health has transitioned to Pending. Initialization in progress (running for 19 seconds). There are no instances.
INFO: Created Auto Scaling launch configuration named: awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBAutoScalingLaunchConfiguration-RZPSBCGFS6HY
INFO: Added instance [i-09cc6faf451ef3670] to your environment.
INFO: Created Auto Scaling group named: awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBAutoScalingGroup-BQI6UG2OLL7E
INFO: Waiting for EC2 instances to launch. This may take a few minutes.
INFO: Created Auto Scaling group policy named: arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-1:457680865345:scalingPolicy:a3629314-6d24-4871-a0a1-59d74a1087c2:autoScalingGroupName/awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBAutoScalingGroup-BQI6UG2OLL7E:policyName/awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBAutoScalingScaleDownPolicy-1SM372VEND7T6
INFO: Created Auto Scaling group policy named: arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-1:457680865345:scalingPolicy:b03a08fb-e39f-4dc5-8e00-f81f8059fc56:autoScalingGroupName/awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBAutoScalingGroup-BQI6UG2OLL7E:policyName/awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBAutoScalingScaleUpPolicy-AS65NNA5M4PP
INFO: Created CloudWatch alarm named: awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBCloudwatchAlarmLow-1D9SO13U3HBR0
INFO: Created CloudWatch alarm named: awseb-e-7xdtjzn4bn-stack-AWSEBCloudwatchAlarmHigh-1FUCKP1GWED3A
ERROR: [Instance: i-09cc6faf451ef3670] Command failed on instance. Return code: 1 Output: (TRUNCATED)...
[PDOException]
SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused
Script php artisan optimize handling the post-install-cmd event returned with error code 1.
Hook /opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/pre/10_composer_install.sh failed. For more detail, check /var/log/eb-activity.log using console or EB CLI.
INFO: Command execution completed on all instances. Summary: [Successful: 0, Failed: 1].
ERROR: Create environment operation is complete, but with errors. For more information, see troubleshooting documentation.
As you can see, it says SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused when running php artisan optimize in the post-install-cmd.
If I try to connect to my MySQL RDS database on the command line, it connects successfully, so it doesn't look like connecting is the problem.
It took me a while to find what it meant by post-install-cmd, but I found it in my composer.json file:
{
"name": "laravel/laravel",
"description": "The Laravel Framework.",
"keywords": ["framework", "laravel"],
"license": "MIT",
"type": "project",
"require": {
"php": ">=5.6.4",
"laravel/framework": "5.3.*",
"doctrine/dbal": "^2.5",
"embed/embed": "^2.7",
"pda/pheanstalk": "~3.0",
"guzzlehttp/guzzle": "^6.2",
"intervention/image": "^2.3",
"approached/laravel-image-optimizer": "2.3.0",
"php-ffmpeg/php-ffmpeg": "0.9.3",
"laravelcollective/html": "^5.3",
"tymon/jwt-auth": "0.5.*",
"brozot/laravel-fcm": "^1.2",
"league/flysystem": "^1.0",
"cybercog/laravel-ban": "^2.1",
"pragmarx/firewall": "^1.0",
"predis/predis": "^1.1",
"aws/aws-sdk-php": "^3.31",
"dusterio/laravel-aws-worker": "^0.1.9",
"fideloper/proxy": "^3.3",
"aws/aws-sdk-php-laravel": "^3.1",
"league/flysystem-aws-s3-v3": "^1.0"
},
"require-dev": {
"fzaninotto/faker": "~1.4",
"mockery/mockery": "0.9.*",
"phpunit/phpunit": "~5.0",
"symfony/css-selector": "3.1.*",
"symfony/dom-crawler": "3.1.*"
},
"autoload": {
"classmap": [
"database"
],
"psr-4": {
"App\\": "app/"
}
},
"autoload-dev": {
"classmap": [
"tests/TestCase.php"
]
},
"scripts": {
"post-root-package-install": [
"php -r \"file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');\""
],
"post-create-project-cmd": [
"php artisan key:generate"
],
"post-install-cmd": [
"Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postInstall",
"php artisan optimize"
],
"post-update-cmd": [
"Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postUpdate",
"php artisan optimize"
]
},
"config": {
"preferred-install": "dist"
}
}
To me, it doesn't look like anything is out of place.
What could the problem be?
Update
I just tried copying and pasting the contents of my project's composer.json to the fresh install of Laravel, and it successfully created an Elastic Beanstalk environment, so it looks like my composer.json isn't the problem.
What could it be?
Update #2
Looking at the eb logs, I discovered this:
[Illuminate\Database\QueryException]
SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused (SQL: select * from `categories` where exists (select * from `topics` where `topics`.`category_id` = `categories`.`id`) order by `name` asc)
[Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDOException]
SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused
The only place that this query is called is in my AppServiceProvider.php class. So I removed it, along with everything else that I added to the class, but I'm still getting the exact same error above, even though I removed that query call.
Why?

Answer 1

To answer my own question, the code in my AppServiceProvider.php file (within the boot() method) was causing it to fail.
What I did was wrapped all the code in the boot() method with this:
public function boot()
{
if (!$this->app->runningInConsole())
{
// Code here
}
}