Error 500 after completing install, no logs, no documentation, no hope.

[PeterPorker3]

So i've been at this since 11am this morning non stop... it is now 6:18pm. First tried to set up with apache which didn't work at all due to the incorrect/outdated documentation, and even after trying steps created by end users from years ago, I only got a blank screen with error 500 in the browser console. I was trying with apache, maybe the nginx instructions still work? not sure, my environment does not use nginx so I abandoned that approach.

So now I am trying with Docker. I have a mariadb container, with phpmyadmin to monitor and set up the database, and portainer to aid in the docker setup as I am not the most experienced docker user. I am using the docker image straight off docker hub mainly since i had already set up mariadb separately and didnt know the docker compose setup would get mysql set up for me... So i deployed the latest leantime image as of today, mapped to external port 8082 to internal port 8080 (it seems your documentation is wrong, as it lists the internal port as 80 and that did not work at all), and was able to finally reach the setup screen by navigating to the machine ip:8082. So i fill out the first time setup info, entering my email/pass and other info, and then at the end it gives me a code 500 in the website itself, not in the console saying "its not you, its us." Then dumps be at a login screen, and no matter what I enter in for the user/pass it does nothing. No error, no login, just refereshes.

Phpmyadmin shows the database was populated with my user's info that I entered in the prior screens, so i do not think the database is the issue. I have messed around with LEAN_APP_URL (which there is no documentation on how to set correctly other than some scattered posts on forums and github), and assuming cookies that need HTTPS was the issue, attempted to get reverse proxy working with HAproxy to my domain. However whenever I set up a backend pointing to my leantime instance, leantime no longer responds through the local ip before the proxy or the public address with my domain after the proxy, just does not work at all, loads forever and times out, so I have no way to know if HTTPS would solve the 500 error if I cannot get HTTPS to work at all. There are no logs in storage/logs (just leantime.log which is empty) and nothing useful in the portainer logs, listed the output below.

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:27:03 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:27:33 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

  2025-04-21 15:28:00 Running [plugins:checkLicense] ............. 4.00ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:28:00 Running [queue:emails] ..................... 5.10ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:28:00 Running [reports:telemetry] ................ 0.37ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:28:00 Running [reports:dailyIngestion] ........... 0.86ms DONE

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:28:03 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:28:33 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

  2025-04-21 15:29:00 Running [plugins:checkLicense] ............. 3.98ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:29:00 Running [queue:emails] ..................... 4.98ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:29:00 Running [reports:telemetry] ................ 0.37ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:29:00 Running [reports:dailyIngestion] ........... 0.90ms DONE

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:29:03 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:29:33 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

  2025-04-21 15:30:00 Running [plugins:checkLicense] ............. 4.42ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:30:00 Running [queue:emails] ..................... 5.34ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:30:00 Running [queue:httprequests] ............... 4.42ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:30:00 Running [queue:default] .................... 0.82ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:30:00 Running [reports:telemetry] ................ 0.38ms DONE

  2025-04-21 15:30:00 Running [reports:dailyIngestion] ........... 1.19ms DONE

127.0.0.1 -  21/Apr/2025:22:30:03 +0000 "GET /index.php" 302

...and then repeats

Please advise if you have any ideas, or need more info. I'm all ears. There are many posts of seemingly similar issues, but digging deeper they end up being different or never being solved, or the solutions did not work for me.

[marcelfolaron]

Hey,

happy to help.

First tried to set up with apache which didn't work at all due to the incorrect/outdated documentation,
What was the issue here? That is probably the simplest set up and should work with almost the default config. What docs are outdated?

First let's get the right logs from the container in /var/www/html/storage/logs (that is inside the Leantime folder in the container). The logs above are just the container logs which aren't all that useful. The easiest way in portainer is via the terminal in the docker container:

You should have a file called leantime-YYYY-MM-DD

More than likely the issue is indeed related to the cookies not being served when not using ssl for that to be fixed you need to set the environment variable LEAN_SESSION_SECURE=0

You can also try setting LEAN_DEBUG to 1 to get more errors and logs.

I remember that someone had issues with the portainer network set up when the db was not in the same network but since you were able to install that should not be the issue here.

Regarding the LEAN_APP_URL you only need to set that when you are behind a reverse proxy or using a subfolder installation. The variable will just ensure that the url in front of all the urls is set to whatever you add in here.

Let me know if you have any issues getting to the log files. We'll need those to help.

[PeterPorker3]

It was LEAN_SESSION_SECURE that was the ticket to my troubleshooting here. That solved the 500 error, and allowed me to create an account and test leantime locally with http. Now that I know leantime is working, I turned my attention to HAProxy. Turns out I had copied some config options from another backend that caused issues (I think it was either HTTP Strict Transport Security or Client-IP backend), and after returning those to default and setting health checks to none it worked just fine. Was able to remove the LEAN_SESSION_SECURE flag, and set LEAN_APP_URL to "https://sub.domain.com/" and now everything is working perfectly.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly! Really wish there was better documentation on the env options, would have saved me some headache.

One more detail to add for others: My storage/logs folder was completely empty until I followed the steps above and enabled LEAN_DEBUG. Did not end up needing those logs, but in case you also didnt see those logs perhaps you need to try those steps first?