Fatal - Dashboard and portal domains cannot be the same

Last updated: 1 minute read.

Description

The Tyk Dashboard service will not start and displays a fatal error as follows:

FATAL Dashboard and portal domains cannot be the same. 
  Dashboard domain: tyk-dashboard.com, Portal domain: tyk-dashboard.com

Cause

Tyk’s developer portal UI needs to run on either a different subdomain or different domain name to the dashboard UI.

Tyk’s Dashboard service may be run in a multi-tenant configuration, and each tenant may have their own developer portals.

The Dashboard service determines which portal to load based on the Host header in the request by the browser. If this conflicts with the hostname of the dashboard UI the dashboard service will not know whether to serve the dashboard or developer portal.

Solution

Firstly, we will need to disable hostnames from within the Dashboard configuration file in order to get the dashboard service started again.

Change host_config.enable_host_names from true to false

"host_config": {
  "enable_host_names": true,    <------ CHANGE TO false
  ...
  ...
},

You should now be able to start the Dashboard service.

Navigate to the Dashboard via it’s public IP address and log-in.

Change your portal domain to something different - e.g. portal.tyk-dashboard.com

Edit the Dashboard configuration file to re-enable host names.

Restart the Dashboard service.