Has anyone set this up with PHP 8.1?

[Zegnat]

When I try to run with wordpress:5.8.3-php8.1 as my image, instead of being redirected to /wp-admin/install.php on first navigation, it throws a fatal error:

Fatal error: Uncaught mysqli_sql_exception: Table 'wordpress.wp_options' doesn't exist in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php:2056

This seems to be isolated to PHP 8.1, as dropping my image down to wordpress:5.8.3-php8.0 gets me passed the error and onto the installation screen.

Any ideas what might be causing that? I am new to running WordPress in Docker so I do not want to exclude user error...

If you want to reproduce the error, you can use docker-compose:

version: '3'

services:
  database:
    image: mariadb:10.6.5
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - database-volume:/var/lib/mysql
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: "root"
      MYSQL_DATABASE: "wordpress"
      MYSQL_USER: "wordpress"
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: "wordpress"
    networks:
      - wordpress
  web:
    image: wordpress:5.8.3-php8.1
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: database
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: "wordpress"
      WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX: "wp_"
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: "wordpress"
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: "wordpress"
      WORDPRESS_DEBUG: 1
    ports:
      - 80:80
    depends_on:
      - database
    networks:
      - wordpress

networks:
  wordpress:

volumes:
  database-volume:

[Zegnat]

Turns out starting a discussion thread here was a form of rubber ducking.

The problem is something discussed with regards to the upcoming WordPress 5.9 release, described on the blog: PHP 8.1 MySQLi default error mode changed. I am a little surprised that the fix for this (which landed back in august!) was not back-ported to WP 5.8.

Have people just not been running on PHP 8.1? Or is it only a really breaking problem during installation, so people with existing blogs that are upgrading to PHP 8.1 after installation are never hit by it?

[tianon]

You beat me to it by about 20 seconds. 😂 ❤️

In the relevant bits of WordPress code, there's a suppress_errors bit of functionality which doesn't cope with this new exception default, but yeah, it appears it's probably only really used seriously on the initialization of a new site? 😅

There are 5.9 RCs available, so probably worth testing one of those to validate the fix? 😄

[Zegnat]

Yep, I just ran with wordpress:beta-5.9-RC2-php8.1 and it worked without issue. Again, I am surprised WordPress did not backport this.

It does make me wonder if offering a PHP 8.1 image at all is a good idea, if it is known installation cannot even run in it...

[tianon]

That type of issue is part of why it's not the default (yet) until WordPress says it's stable and recommended for use 😄

Once 5.9 leaves RCs, we won't be updating the 5.8 images any more, so I think it'll be a moot point either way "soon"