Documentation for Postgres may be missing something

[NickStallman]

I've tried setting up a new Gramps docker deployment, and wish to use Postgres to better support a rather large database size.
I'm struggling to have it actually use Postgres as the database backend however, and it seems like the documentation might be missing something.

It would be super helpful if there was an example docker file added here to have a known good working setup to start from, rather than following instructions on how to modify it?
https://github.com/gramps-project/gramps-web-docs/tree/main/examples

Also the Postgres page links to https://www.grampsweb.org/multi-tree/ which is a 404.

My specific issue is it's not even trying to use postgres at all, no errors in the logs, no tell tale signs, it just keeps using sqlite.

docker-compose.yml (minimal)

services:
  grampsweb: &grampsweb
    image: ghcr.io/gramps-project/grampsweb:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "80:5000"  # host:docker
    environment:
      GRAMPSWEB_NEW_DB_BACKEND: postgresql
      GRAMPSWEB_TREE: gramps
      GRAMPSWEB_POSTGRES_HOST: postgres_gramps
      GRAMPSWEB_POSTGRES_USER: gramps
      GRAMPSWEB_POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres_password_gramps
      GRAMPSWEB_SEARCH_INDEX_DB_URI: postgresql://gramps:postgres_password_gramps@postgres_gramps:5432/gramps
    depends_on:
      - postgres_gramps
    volumes:
      - gramps_users:/app/users  # persist user database
      - gramps_index:/app/indexdir  # persist search index
      - gramps_thumb_cache:/app/thumbnail_cache  # persist thumbnails
      - gramps_cache:/app/cache  # persist export and report caches
      - gramps_secret:/app/secret  # persist flask secret
      - gramps_db:/root/.gramps/grampsdb  # persist Gramps database
      - gramps_media:/app/media  # persist media files
      - gramps_tmp:/tmp
  postgres_gramps:
    image: ghcr.io/davidmstraub/gramps-postgres:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres_password_admin
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD_GRAMPS: postgres_password_gramps
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD_GRAMPS_USER: postgres_password_gramps_user
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

Relevant part of the Log:

Attaching to gramps-web_grampsweb_1
grampsweb_1           | ls: cannot access '/app/indexdir/*.db': No such file or directory
grampsweb_1           | INFO  [alembic.runtime.migration] Context impl SQLiteImpl.
grampsweb_1           | INFO  [alembic.runtime.migration] Will assume non-transactional DDL.
grampsweb_1           | [2024-10-26 17:30:23 +0000] [15] [INFO] Starting gunicorn 22.0.0

[DavidMStraub]

Hi,

how did you create the tree?

You are using the single-tree setup (since you're specifying GRAMPSWEB_TREE, so the GRAMPSWEB_NEW_DB_BACKEND setting has no effect. (Btw the multi-tree docs moved to https://www.grampsweb.org/install_setup/multi-tree/ - it would be awesome if you would find the time to correct the dead link in the docs https://github.com/gramps-project/gramps-web-docs).

To create a new Postgres-based tree to use with the single-tree setup, you can directly use Gramps CLI, see https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Addon:PostgreSQL.

The automatic creation of a new tree by simply providing a non-existing tree name at startup is a convenience feature for simplified setups, it doesn't support Postgres.

[DavidMStraub]

I'll move this do a discussion in the backend repo.

[NickStallman]

Thanks, I've filed a PR to fix the broken link. :)

On the Addon:PostgreSQL page I don't actually see any gramps cli commands mentioned?
It seems to cover setting up a postgres server, but then jumps over to the Desktop app instructions, nothing that looks applicable to gramps web.

I'm a web developer so I'm very familiar with setting up this kind of thing, however I'm totally new to Gramps.
I feel like there's something gramps specific I'm missing.