[FATAL] Unable to connect to the database: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:5432: connect: connection refused

[philosowaffle]

I have miniflux working now. But wanted to document the issues I ran into when trying to spin up miniflux using the example basic docker compose.

Initially, I started with the example basic compose file, but a few minor changes:

version: "3.9"
  
services:
  rss: 
    image: miniflux/miniflux:latest
    container_name: rss 
    #restart: unless-stopped
    environment: 
      - TZ=America/Chicago
      - DATABASE_URL=rss-db://miniflux:secret@db/miniflux?sslmode=disable
      - RUN_MIGRATIONS=1
      - CREATE_ADMIN=1
      - ADMIN_USERNAME=admin
      - ADMIN_PASSWORD=password
      - DEBUG=1
    ports:
      - 6250:8080
    depends_on:
      - rss-db
    volumes:
      - ./data/db_socket:/socket/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "/usr/bin/miniflux", "-healthcheck", "auto"]
    logging:
      driver: loki
  
  rss-db:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: rss-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=miniflux
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret
    volumes:
      - ./data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "pg_isready", "-U", "postgres"]
      interval: 10s
      start_period: 30s
    logging:
      driver: loki

The DB appeared to spin up fine, but then Miniflux was completely unable to connect. According to my DATABSE_URL, miniflux should have been trying to connect to the db using:

rss-db://miniflux:secret@db/miniflux?sslmode=disable

Notice the host name here is rss-db, which should resolve to the rss-db container on the same docker network. However, I got below error in the log file:

[FATAL] Unable to connect to the database: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:5432: connect: connection refused

I fought with that for a while, checking permissions, etc. Then gave up and decided to try connecting via socket. Here, is what the modified compose file looks like to switch to Socket connection:

version: "3.4"
  
services:
  rss: 
    image: miniflux/miniflux:latest
    container_name: rss 
    #restart: unless-stopped
    environment: 
      - TZ=America/Chicago
      - DATABASE_URL=user=postgres password=postgres dbname=miniflux2 sslmode=disable host=/socket/postgresql
      - RUN_MIGRATIONS=1
      - CREATE_ADMIN=1
      - ADMIN_USERNAME=admin
      - ADMIN_PASSWORD=password
      - DEBUG=1
    ports:
      - 6250:8080
    depends_on:
      - rss-db
    volumes:
      - ./data/db_socket:/socket/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "/usr/bin/miniflux", "-healthcheck", "auto"]
    logging:
      driver: loki
  
  rss-db:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: rss-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres
    volumes:
      - ./data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
      - ./data/db_socket:/var/run/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "pg_isready", "-U", "postgres"]
      interval: 10s
      start_period: 30s
    logging:
      driver: loki

I configured the DATABASE_URL according to the documentation. I also updated the POSTGRES_USER and POSTGRES_PASWORD to match.

This mostly worked, but I started getting a new error in the logs from miniflux:

2021-12-22 09:02:04 | [FATAL] Unable to connect to the database: pq: database "miniflux2" does not exist

Dug into the PG docker docks and made the following two changes:

1. DATABASE_URL - set dbname to 'miniflux'
2. POSTGRES_DB=miniflux

Below is the full compose file that finally worked for me:

version: "3.4"
  
services:
  rss: 
    image: miniflux/miniflux:latest
    container_name: rss 
    #restart: unless-stopped
    environment: 
      - TZ=America/Chicago
      - DATABASE_URL=user=postgres password=postgres dbname=miniflux sslmode=disable host=/socket/postgresql
      - RUN_MIGRATIONS=1
      - CREATE_ADMIN=1
      - ADMIN_USERNAME=admin
      - ADMIN_PASSWORD=password
      - DEBUG=1
    ports:
      - 6250:8080
    depends_on:
      - rss-db
    volumes:
      - ./data/db_socket:/socket/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "/usr/bin/miniflux", "-healthcheck", "auto"]
    logging:
      driver: loki
  
  rss-db:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: rss-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres
      - POSTGRES_DB=miniflux
    volumes:
      - ./data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
      - ./data/db_socket:/var/run/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "pg_isready", "-U", "postgres"]
      interval: 10s
      start_period: 30s
    logging:
      driver: loki

Maybe I missed something in the docs along the way, but my experience was that the example basic compose file did not work.

[philosowaffle]

Feel free to close this if you want, I just wanted it documented somewhere in case others try searching for a similar problem in the issues.

[notflip]

@philosowaffle After following your above steps, I'm still getting the error "Database miniflux not found", this is my docker-compose file, did I miss anything?

version: "2"

services:
  miniflux-app:
    image: miniflux/miniflux:latest
    container_name: miniflux-app
    depends_on:
      - miniflux-db
    ports:
      - 7001:8080
    environment:
      - DATABASE_URL=postgres://miguel:mypwd@miniflux-db/miniflux?sslmode=disable
      - RUN_MIGRATIONS=1
      - CREATE_ADMIN=1
      - ADMIN_USERNAME=miguel
      - ADMIN_PASSWORD=mypwd

  miniflux-db:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: miniflux-db
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=miguel
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mypwd
      - POSTGRES_DB=miniflux
    volumes:
      - /volume1/dockerdata/miniflux/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

[philosowaffle]

@notflip If you've previously tried to launch the miniflux-db container, then Postgres will have created a database by default. Per their documentation the POSTGRES_DB value is only used to create a new database when another DB does not already exist. To resolve this,

1. Spin down the containers docker-compose down
2. Delete the contents of your mounted db folder /volume1/dockerdata/miniflux/db, based on the permissions, it may appear empty on the filesystem and you may need to use sudo to delete it
3. Spin the containers back up docker-compose up miniflux-db

This time, when the miniflux-db container is created it should also create a new db with the name of miniflux. You should also see a log message written from the db container confirming a new db was created.

[notflip]

@philosowaffle Thank you, working perfectly! And you were right about the filesystem not showing theses files, had to login using root on my NAS to see them.

[mattcristal]

Thanks @philosowaffle! I was also struggling with this, but your docker compose suggestion helped me :)