Example of how to use MariaDB (MySQL) instead of SQLite

[jeffalanmcclain]

First, thanks for a FANTASTIC product. I can't believe this has been missing from my life for so long. I have been using it religiously for a couple months now and can't live without it.

Anyway, I saw the comment in the installation section about putting custom ENVIRONMENT values in the docker YAML code to migrate over to using a proper MySQL (or hopefully MariaDB), and it said to refer to the .env.example file but it doesn't seem to work. First of all, it seems to want to have a DASH at the front? Maybe not, but it errored on the restart until I put those in each line. Second, once I put the DASH in front of the SPOOLMAN_DB_TYPE=mysql for example in the ENVIRONMENT: section, it says "no database type specified" in the restart logs and just continues to connect to the old SQLite. Need a better example of the YAML changes for DB (and for the DB HOST, do you just supply an IP address or Domain name on the DNS server or do you need to supply the http://? Lots missing here. Sure would appreciate some guidance.

[jeffalanmcclain]

BTW, I spent a bunch of time confirming that the docker compose config was dumping out the proper environment variables, and even tried over-riding them to a .env file to match the .env.example. But nothing worked using the docker compose restart (it restarted service but with all the same old DB settings). Only once I used the "docker compose up -d" did it seem to correctly update to using MySQL and try to log in to my host. However, it just keeps looping over and over on "connecting" and "performing migrations" but none of the SQLite ported data is ever shown and it looks like it is an empty time/out web access. So, now I'm not sure if it is just not connecting, being rejected, or not correctly getting through the MariaDB (which technically isn't MySQL, but should work like it in most cases). I may have to try to deploy a true MySQL DB on my Synology NAS and try to see if that works (though initial checks show that MySQL is not allowed only MariaDB on my synology NAS)...either way, the note on the installation page needs to provide a better example with a sample DB connection environment setting and NOT say you can just issue docker compose restart. That won't reset the DB.