DB migration failed when setting up in a container on an AWS EC2 instance with AWS RDS postgres db

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Hi, forgive this very beginner question.

I was planning to setup Vikunja locally on a NAS server I was planning to build, but since hardware is expensive right now, plus I need to learn more about cloud architecture etc. for my job prospects, I’m hoping to set it up on an AWS EC2 instance as a temporary solutiuon, more so than anything as a learning exercise.

It’s probably complicating things unecessarily by using docker on the EC2 instance instead of just installing it locally using a yum package on the EC2, but I want to learn as much of these technologies as possible. I then created an AWS RDS instance running postgres and connected them.

I’m not using docker compose, since my understanding is that I don’t need to, since the database instance is created via the AWS management console, rather than as a 2nd docker container running on the EC2 instance.

config.yml looks like this

service:
  publicurl: <public_url_of_the_ec2_instance>

database:
    type: postgres
    host: vikunja-postgres.<myhash>.ap-northeast-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432/
    user: vikunja
    database: vikunja
    password: <mypw>
    sslmode: require
log:
    enabled: true
    standard: stdout
    level: DEBUG
    database: stdout
    databaselevel: DEBUG
    http: stdout
    events: stdout
    eventslevel: DEBUG

I am able to connect to the database instance using psql from the EC2 instance after getting the ssl certs sorted correctly, and was able to create the vikunja user and database.

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-21-23 vikunja]$ psql "host=$RDSHOST port=5432 user=postgres password=<mypw>"
psql (17.7, server 17.6)
SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.3, cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, compression: off, ALPN: postgresql)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=> \du
                                List of roles
    Role name    |                         Attributes
-----------------+------------------------------------------------------------
 postgres        | Create role, Create DB                                    +
                 | Password valid until infinity
 rds_ad          | Cannot login
 rds_extension   | No inheritance, Cannot login
 rds_iam         | Cannot login
 rds_password    | Cannot login
 rds_replication | Cannot login
 rds_reserved    | No inheritance, Cannot login
 rds_superuser   | Cannot login
 rdsadmin        | Superuser, Create role, Create DB, Replication, Bypass RLS+
                 | Password valid until infinity
 vikunja         | Create DB

postgres=> \x on
Expanded display is on.
postgres=> \l vikunja
List of databases
-[ RECORD 1 ]-----+------------
Name              | vikunja
Owner             | vikunja
Encoding          | UTF8
Locale Provider   | libc
Collate           | en_US.UTF-8
Ctype             | en_US.UTF-8
Locale            |
ICU Rules         |
Access privileges |

however, when I run the container (using the vikunja/vikunja:latest image without modification) I get the following error:

ERROR msg=“could not check for paradedb extension: pq: database \”/vikunja\" does not exist"

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-21-23 vikunja]$ docker run -p 3456:3456 -v $PWD/files:/app/vikunja/files -v $PWD/config.yml:/etc/vikunja/config.yml vikunja/vikunja
2026/02/10 05:42:21 failed to create modcache index dir: mkdir /.cache: permission denied
time=2026-02-10T05:42:21.922Z level=INFO msg="Using config file: /etc/vikunja/config.yml"
time=2026-02-10T05:42:21.925Z level=INFO msg="Running migrations…"
time=2026-02-10T05:42:21.952Z level=ERROR msg="could not check for paradedb extension: pq: database \"/vikunja\" does not exist"
time=2026-02-10T05:42:21.988Z level=INFO msg="[SQL] SELECT tablename FROM pg_tables WHERE schemaname = $1 [public] - 35.439261ms" component=database
time=2026-02-10T05:42:21.988Z level=ERROR msg="Migration failed: pq: database \"/vikunja\" does not exist"
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-21-23 vikunja]$

I don’t think it’s a problem with the connection to the database instance, because if i change the database.password in the config.yml to be wrong, I get an authentication error, which suggests it is indeed connecting to the database:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-21-23 vikunja]$ docker run -p 3456:3456 -v $PWD/files:/app/vikunja/files -v $PWD/config.yml:/etc/vikunja/config.yml vikunja/vikunja
2026/02/10 05:47:07 failed to create modcache index dir: mkdir /.cache: permission denied
time=2026-02-10T05:47:07.698Z level=INFO msg="Using config file: /etc/vikunja/config.yml"
time=2026-02-10T05:47:07.700Z level=INFO msg="Running migrations…"
time=2026-02-10T05:47:07.732Z level=ERROR msg="could not check for paradedb extension: pq: password authentication failed for user \"vikunja\""
time=2026-02-10T05:47:07.755Z level=INFO msg="[SQL] SELECT tablename FROM pg_tables WHERE schemaname = $1 [public] - 20.320423ms" component=database
time=2026-02-10T05:47:07.755Z level=ERROR msg="Migration failed: pq: password authentication failed for user \"vikunja\""
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-21-23 vikunja]$

It also doesn’t work if I change the both the database.user and database.database to “postgres”. I get the same pq: database \”/postgres\" does not exist"

Any idea what I’m doing wrong here?

Again, I apologize if I’m asking something very basic that might not be related to the application itself, and if it’s inappropriate to post here rather than Stack overflow etc. please let me know.

Thanks!

1 Like
2

OK, I was able to fix this myself, so I will explain in case it can be helpful for anyone in the future.

  1. When creating the RDS instance, instead of using Choose a database creation method →
    Easy create

    instead do “Full Configuration” ,

  2. change master username from “postgres” to “vikunja”

  3. Under additional configuration → Initial database name, put vikunja

I guess it creates the database with proper permissions and/or schema if you do it that way. There’s probably a way create the vikunja database correctly via psql later, but I couldn’t figure it out easily.

Anway, I hope someone might learn from my mistake.

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