"Server error" on first user login after initial setup

Self-Hosted | v5
1

version 5.12.13; Ubuntu 24.04 server vm self hosted

Used this guide

to set up a new instance. Worked without a hitch.

But, once I executed setup and created the first user, it fails to log in with “Server error” reported next to a red bar on the login page.

laravel log says
[2025-08-13 18:32:20] production.INFO: To setup the app run: cp .env.example .env
[2025-08-13 18:44:44] production.INFO: db fails
[2025-08-13 18:45:53] production.ERROR: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table ‘invoiceninja.accounts’ doesn’t exist (Connection: mysql, SQL: update accounts set is_scheduler_running = 1, `account>
[stacktrace]

and
[2025-08-13 20:46:32] production.INFO: file_put_contents(/var/www/html/invoiceninja/storage/framework/cache/data/02/65/0265a28be8ae180d9d231879cc522733ad7d4408): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory
[2025-08-13 20:47:13] production.ERROR: file_put_contents(/var/www/html/invoiceninja/storage/framework/cache/data/63/72/6372aec711c554d4fabd24e4f1fd6a23e327b922): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory {"userI>
[stacktrace]

during setup, I was able to confirm the sql db login works and db exists.

2

That error I have not seen.

3

Hi,

Do you see the accounts table in the database?

4

Yes, I do.

All the tables appear to exist.

5

Are you seeing new instances of the “Table ‘invoiceninja.accounts’ doesn’t exist” error?

6

No. The most recent error in laravel log is this:
[2025-08-13 21:10:25] production.ERROR: file_put_contents(/var/www/html/invoiceninja/storage/framework/cache/data/63/72/6372aec711c554d4fabd24e4f1fd6a23e327b922): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory {“userId”:1,“exception”:"[object] (ErrorException(code: 0): file_put_contents(/var/www/html/invoiceninja/storage/framework/cache/data/63/72/6372aec711c554d4fabd24e4f1fd6a23e327b922): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory at /var/www/html/invoiceninja/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Filesystem/Filesystem.php:204)
[stacktrace]

any other place I should check for what’s wrong?

7

Have you tried re-uploading the logo?

8

How would I do this? I can not get into the GUI, so I can not do it from there.
I can’t log in with the first user I created, login page says “Server error” with a red bar to its left. But the login page does load.

9

I’m not sure, you may want to try a clean install

10

OK - I’ll rolled my virtual machine to a state right before the ninja install. Installed version 5.12.6 instead of the most recent one, 5.12.13. Setup succeeded and I was able to log in.
The only thing that changed about my procedure was the installer version.
So, you might want to check if there is an issue with the latest setup script.
I repeated the process 2 times yesterday with the same error result in version 5.12.13.

Today I installed 5.12.6 and setup succeeded, all other things being the same.
I updated the app to the latest version and the only error I am getting is “crons not running” (once logged into the UI), which I will troubleshoot next.

11

I re-executed the following:
cd /var/www/html/invoiceninja && /usr/bin/php -d register_argc_argv=On artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

and the crons not running error went away.
So, apparently all is peachy now.

12

Glad to hear it, thanks for the update!

13

That’s interesting… so 12.6 works fine but 12.13 doesn’t… although I’m running 12.8 with 12.18 available…