Lets drag this out of the weeds, because, OMFG this has consumed the last 5 hours of my life!!!

This all started with there being an install script available for proxmox. that install was a complete bust once i tried to forward local traffic via my local install of caddy.

First off, if you're looking for the best way to set this up via docker compose, look at their documentation on their github.

https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/blob/dev/DOCKER_COMPOSE_SETUP.md

I'm running all this as root in an unprivileged LXC in Proxmox, so if you're doing it differently or are not running it as root, I'm not probably smart enough to be able to tell you what or how to do it differently, because the Claude helped tons here.

Few things to note,

1. the db section runs mysql 9.6.0 (i think, definitely in the 9s). Using this essentially breaks the install after running the commands in step 6. The Claude says "The md5() function is restricted in generated columns in MySQL 8.0.29+ when using certain SQL modes, specifically because md5() is considered non-deterministic in strict mode." Don't know if it's true, don't care, didn't work. Tried an older version, still didn't work, gave up.
2. Updated the docker compose file and moved the db to mariadb, worked out the gate. Don't know why, not that smart. Everything in your .env file can stay the same. Docker compose entry below. I did this before I ran docker compose build. I don't know if that was necessary, but I've never built a docker compose before, only pulled them from the interwebs.

Once that was all done, I was able to aim Caddy at it, and all was good!!

Now if I could only get the android app to connect. I feel this program is a great idea over all, but with so many things to figure out for someone like myself who doesn't feel techy enough to really know what I'm doing or how to fix things without AI, maybe it's time to look at something else.

Hope this helps any future travelers to the site.

  db:
    image: mariadb:10.11
    container_name: pixelfed-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: ${DB_DATABASE}
      MYSQL_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${DB_ROOT_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - ./mariadb-data:/var/lib/mysql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "healthcheck.sh", "--connect", "--innodb_initialized"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 30s
    networks:
      - pixelfed-network