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~ / til / Fixing php errors in a Nextcloud docker-compose configuration 2023-03-01 | 2 minutes

I was trying to rescan the files in my Nextcloud server (running on Raspberry Pi 4 with DietPi), and kept running into some weird php errors.

First error - “could not find driver”

I was trying using the following syntax to call occ and scan the files:

sudo -u www-data php /path/to/nextcloud/occ files:scan --all

but I kept running into a PHP error. Specifically this error:

Doctrine\DBAL\Exception: Failed to connect to the database: An exception occurred in the driver: could not find driver in /path/to/nextcloud/lib/private/DB/Connection.php:139

followed by a long, verbose stack trace.

It took me a decent amount of time to diagnose the exact issue, but eventually I found this list of required PHP modules in the Nextcloud admin manual.

Running php -m will print out the list of currently installed PHP modules. I noticed I was missing quite a few of the required modules, but the one that was causing my issue was the missing pdo_mysql module. This can be installed by running:

sudo apt-get install php7.4-mysql

Note: This command will change based on your OS, PHP version and database type

This resolved the error! However (as is always the case), this only meant I got a shiny new error instead:

Second error - “Name or service not known”

Doctrine\DBAL\Exception: Failed to connect to the database: An exception occurred in the driver: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known in /path/to/nextcloud/lib/private/DB/Connection.php:139

From first glance, this looks like something wrong in the DNS name resolution. This sent me a long way down the wrong path, changing a whole bunch of things in my docker-compose.yml file. Eventually however, after a long and perilous journey over the high seas of Nextcloud forums and StackOverflow, I found this example of running php occ in a docker-compose configuration. This led me to running this command:

docker-compose exec -u www-data nextcloud-app php occ files:scan --all

Note: replace nextcloud-app with the name of your Nextcloud container. Also, this command must be run from the directory of your Nextcloud docker-compose.yml

….aaaaaand, voila! The command runs, the files are scanned and everything is up to date.

terminal output showing the files that have been successfully been scanned

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