[SOLVED] Docker Image doesn't create tables

[aarondvail]

I just downloaded the WordPress docker image

I'm essentially doing a docker run command to execute (bash script)

ContainerName=WordPress
ImageName=wordpress:php8.4-apache
ContainerIP="<REDACTED>"
ContainerPorts="<REDACTED>"
ContainerNetwork="<REDACTED>"
DockerDataHome=/opt/port
ContDataHome=$DockerDataHome/$ContainerName/
ContainerMounts="-v $ContDataHome/data:/var/www/html -v $ContDataHome/conf:/config2 -v $ContDataHome/conf/apache2/ports.conf:/etc/apache2/ports.conf -v $ContDataHome/conf/apache2/conf-enabled/:/etc/apache2/conf-enabled/ -e WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_DB_USER=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX=WP_ -e WORDPRESS_DEBUG=true"
MoreContainerMounts="-e WORDPRESS_AUTH_KEY=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_SECURE_AUTH_KEY=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_LOGGED_IN_KEY=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_NONCE_KEY=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_AUTH_SALT=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_SECURE_AUTH_SALT=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_LOGGED_IN_SALT=<REDACTED> -e WORDPRESS_NONCE_SALT=<REDACTED>"
EvenMoreContainerMounts="-e WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA=\"/* Multisite */ define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true ); define('MULTISITE', true); define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false); define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', '<REDACTED>'); define('PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/'); define('SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1); define('BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);\""

DefaultMounts="-v /opt/port/docker/file/public.conf:/etc/resolv.conf -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro -v /opt/port/docker/file/commonhosts:/etc/hosts  -e TZ=\"America/New_York\" "

mkdir -p $ContDataHome
mkdir -p $ContDataHome/conf
mkdir -p $ContDataHome/data
docker container stop $ContainerName
docker container rm $ContainerName
docker image pull $ImageName
echo docker run -d --name=$ContainerName --restart unless-stopped $ContainerIP $DefaultMounts $ContainerMounts $MoreContainerMounts $EvenMoreContainerMounts $ContainerPorts $ContainerNetwork $ImageName
docker run -d --name=$ContainerName --restart unless-stopped $ContainerIP $DefaultMounts $ContainerMounts $MoreContainerMounts -e WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA="/* Multisite */ define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true ); define('MULTISITE', true); define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false); define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', '<REDACTED>'); define('PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/'); define('SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1); define('BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);" $ContainerPorts $ContainerNetwork $ImageName

The MySQL server is also a container on the same host, connecting with FQDN. Users created, DB created.

Once Container starts I get the error (and from what I read the infamous error):

Error establishing a database connection

stdout (or stderr) reports:

[Wed Aug 20 02:40:31.158348 2025] [php:notice] [pid 55:tid 55] [client 172.16.50.9:0] WordPress database error Table 'wordpress.WP_blogs' doesn't exist for query SELECT WP_blogs.blog_id\n\t\t\t FROM WP_blogs \n\t\t\t WHERE domain = '' AND path IN ( '/index.php/', '/' )\n\t\t\t \n\t\t\t ORDER BY CHAR_LENGTH(path) DESC\n\t\t\t LIMIT 1 made by require('wp-blog-header.php'), require_once('wp-load.php'), require_once('wp-config.php'), require_once('wp-settings.php'), require('wp-includes/ms-settings.php'), ms_load_current_site_and_network, get_site_by_path, get_sites, WP_Site_Query->query, WP_Site_Query->get_sites, WP_Site_Query->get_site_ids

vail-industries.com:80 172.16.50.9 - - [20/Aug/2025:02:40:31 +0000] "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1" 500 2757 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/139.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

I would say that 100% of the internet blames either connectivity, wrong username, or wrong password. Or a combination there of.
That being said, I added a php file to /var/www/html.
credtest.php

<?php
    $dbUID = getenv('WORDPRESS_DB_USER');
    $dbpasswd = getenv('WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD');
    $dbhost = getenv('WORDPRESS_DB_HOST');
    echo "$dbhost, $dbUID, $dbpasswd<br>";
    $test = mysqli_connect($dbhost, $dbUID, $dbpasswd);
    if (!$test) {
        die('MySQL Error: ' . mysqli_error());
    }
    echo 'Credentials are good! Well done.';
    mysqli_close($testConnection);
?>

and the results were:

, ,
Credentials are good! Well done.

So that being said, I'm not sure what the issue is... I've got good userID, password and host information.... I can connect... but I don't know what else I can do.... I set
WORDPRESS_DEBUG=true

But no extra log is created....

[tianon]

I can't reproduce, even using your same interesting all-caps WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX: 😅 🤔

$ docker network create wp
dc6c955242c5c67ede4e3417b5ba4caa424a58da9b521bd9dd9a05c8525f73c0

$ docker run -dit --env MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=1 --env MYSQL_USER=exampleuser --env MYSQL_PASSWORD=examplepassword --env MYSQL_DATABASE=wordpress --network wp --name wp-mysql mysql:8
9bf4db1becb7af1abdb9a0ad09fbb5e6422ed650b5a7f99104cd151aaa9378aa

$ docker logs --tail=1 wp-mysql
2025-08-20T18:36:18.817980Z 0 [System] [MY-010931] [Server] /usr/sbin/mysqld: ready for connections. Version: '8.4.6'  socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'  port: 3306  MySQL Community Server - GPL.

$ docker run -dit --network wp --name wp --env WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=wp-mysql --env WORDPRESS_DB_USER=exampleuser --env WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=examplepassword --env WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=wordpress --env WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX=WP_ wordpress
aa80a186088a0b11e53efd0a810eca24a879676cf1b1e005a7b45c36222d9bee

$ docker logs wp-mysql
WordPress not found in /var/www/html - copying now...
Complete! WordPress has been successfully copied to /var/www/html
No 'wp-config.php' found in /var/www/html, but 'WORDPRESS_...' variables supplied; copying 'wp-config-docker.php' (WORDPRESS_DB_HOST WORDPRESS_DB_NAME WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD WORDPRESS_DB_USER WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX)
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 172.17.0.3. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 172.17.0.3. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
[Wed Aug 20 18:36:50.639128 2025] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 1:tid 1] AH00163: Apache/2.4.65 (Debian) PHP/8.2.29 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Aug 20 18:36:50.639152 2025] [core:notice] [pid 1:tid 1] AH00094: Command line: 'apache2 -D FOREGROUND'

$ docker container inspect --format '{{ .NetworkSettings.Networks.wp.IPAddress }}' wp
172.17.0.3

$ curl -fsSL http://172.17.0.3/ | grep '<title>'
	<title>WordPress &rsaquo; Installation</title>

$ docker logs --tail=2 wp
172.17.0.1 - - [20/Aug/2025:18:39:38 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 364 "-" "curl/7.88.1"
172.17.0.1 - - [20/Aug/2025:18:39:38 +0000] "GET /wp-admin/install.php HTTP/1.1" 200 13684 "-" "curl/7.88.1"

I then pulled up http://172.17.0.3/ in my browser and walked through the install wizard, which all also worked fine:

$ curl -fsSL http://172.17.0.3/ | grep '<title>'
	<title>foo</title>

$ docker exec -it wp-mysql mysql -uexampleuser -pexamplepassword wordpress -e 'SHOW TABLES'
mysql: [Warning] Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure.
+-----------------------+
| Tables_in_wordpress   |
+-----------------------+
| WP_commentmeta        |
| WP_comments           |
| WP_links              |
| WP_options            |
| WP_postmeta           |
| WP_posts              |
| WP_term_relationships |
| WP_term_taxonomy      |
| WP_termmeta           |
| WP_terms              |
| WP_usermeta           |
| WP_users              |
+-----------------------+

[aarondvail]

This helps identify where the problem lies.....

The problem lies in the Multisite setup per the read.me on docker hub.

If I run my script without it, it creates some tables and I'm able to go through the setup process through the browser...

If I run the script with it, I get the afore mentioned table missing error.

I even tried running the script without multisite to get some of the tables created, then reran the script again (needed to delete the wp-config.php to add the multitenant parts to it, which never happened)

The stdout:

[22-Aug-2025 16:12:49 UTC] WordPress database error Table 'wordpress.viwp_blogs' doesn't exist for query SELECT viwp_blogs.blog_id

  	 FROM viwp_blogs 

  	 WHERE domain = '<REDACTED>' AND path = '/'

  	 

  	 ORDER BY viwp_blogs.blog_id ASC

  	 LIMIT 1 made by require_once('wp-load.php'), require_once('wp-config.php'), require_once('wp-settings.php'), require('wp-includes/ms-settings.php'), ms_load_current_site_and_network, get_site_by_path, get_sites, WP_Site_Query->query, WP_Site_Query->get_sites, WP_Site_Query->get_site_ids

- - [22/Aug/2025:16:12:49 +0000] "POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php HTTP/1.1" 500 1390 >"http:///wp-admin/tools.php" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) >Chrome/139.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

And the Browser gives a bit better error:

Error establishing a database connection
If your site does not display, please contact the owner of this network. If you are the owner of this network please check that your >host’s database server is running properly and all tables are error free.

Database tables are missing. This means that your host’s database server is not running, WordPress was not installed properly, or someone deleted viwp_site. You really should look at your database now.

What do I do now? Read the Debugging a WordPress Network article. Some of the suggestions there may help you figure out what went wrong. If you are still stuck with this message, then check that your database contains the following tables:

viwp_users
viwp_usermeta
viwp_blogs
viwp_blogmeta
viwp_signups
viwp_site
viwp_sitemeta
viwp_registration_log

and the only difference in the wp-config.php is the auth keys.... which per Debugging a WordPress Network - Advanced Administration Handbook, there should be more differences.
And per the browser error, 6 tables are missing.

My theory is if the wp-config.php gets updated correctly, then the missing tables will get created.

[tianon]

As noted in https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/multisite/create-network/, you do need to have a completely installed/configured WordPress instance before you "upgrade" it to be multisite-aware. 😅

I've got a multisite instance I set up recently, and I recall I had to install WordPress, then set WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA to include define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );, then go through the admin panel to actually configure/upgrade it, then the page shows a list of settings that have to be added to the config, which I put into WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA also (all still using the stock wp-config-docker.php that this repository maintains/installs):

	--env WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA="
		define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );
		define( 'MULTISITE', true );
		define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );
		define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'my.example.initial.domain.was.here' );
		define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
		define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
		define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
	"

[aarondvail]

Thank you for your help.... I was able to get the multisite container working....

I had to do the following steps:
1> Run the WordPress container without the WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA.
2> Complete the configuration through the web interface.
3> Reload the WordPress container WITH the WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA.
4> manually add the missing tables into the DB.
5> inserted 3 records per Debugging a WordPress Network
6> restarted Container

and I'm up....