[PROBLEM] create_entities_table FAIL

[pascas23]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

Hi, I installed Bookstack via a Docker image. Before now, I used a clean manual installation. I had made backups. Now I tried restoring them within Docker. The restore was partially successful. I can use my old credentials and I don't see any apparent errors. Unfortunately, I no longer see books, chapters, or pages. From the manual queries I ran, the data appears to be present, but it seems that this version of Bookstack is different and doesn't read the data in the same way. I tried using the php migrate function, but it gave the error: "create_entities_table FAIL". What can I do?
Base table or view already exists: 1050 Table 'entities' already exists
at vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:824

Expected Behavior

I expected to see all the books, chapters and pages in the sql backup correctly

Steps To Reproduce

I installed CasaOS. I went to the store and searched for bookstack. I installed it. Then I ran the command:
docker run -it --rm --entrypoint /bin/bash lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest appkey
To create the key, I copied it into the CasaOS environment variables for the BookStack application.
I copied the file of my database backup:
docker cp /mysourcedir/bookstack.backup.sql big-bear-bookstack-db:/bookstack_old.sql
Next, I entered the database container:
docker exec -it big-bear-bookstack-db bash
and ran mysql to import the file:
mysql --password=mypwd --user=bigbear --host=localhost
mysql> use bookstackapp;
mysql> source bookstack_old.sql;
Then I exited the database container.
I entered the app container.
docker exec -it big-bear-bookstack /bin/bash
I performed the migration:
cd /app/www
php artisan migrate

Environment

- OS: armbian trixie (raspberry PI 4)
- How docker service was installed: it was installed automatically by CasaOs

CPU architecture

arm64

Docker creation

automatically created by CasaOs

Container logs

docker logs big-bear-bookstack-db
[migrations] started
[migrations] no migrations found
usermod: no changes
───────────────────────────────────────

      ██╗     ███████╗██╗ ██████╗
      ██║     ██╔════╝██║██╔═══██╗
      ██║     ███████╗██║██║   ██║
      ██║     ╚════██║██║██║   ██║
      ███████╗███████║██║╚██████╔╝
      ╚══════╝╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═════╝

   Brought to you by linuxserver.io
───────────────────────────────────────

To support LSIO projects visit:
https://www.linuxserver.io/donate/

───────────────────────────────────────
GID/UID
───────────────────────────────────────

User UID:    911
User GID:    911
───────────────────────────────────────

cp: not replacing '/config/custom.cnf'
[custom-init] No custom files found, skipping...
251207 22:59:16 mysqld_safe Logging to '/config/databases/big-bear-bookstack-db.err'.
251207 22:59:16 mysqld_safe Starting mariadbd daemon with databases from /config/databases
Connection to localhost (::1) 3306 port [tcp/mysql] succeeded!
[ls.io-init] done.

docker logs big-bear-bookstack
[migrations] started
[migrations] 01-nginx-site-confs-default: skipped
[migrations] 02-default-location: skipped
[migrations] done
usermod: no changes
───────────────────────────────────────

      ██╗     ███████╗██╗ ██████╗
      ██║     ██╔════╝██║██╔═══██╗
      ██║     ███████╗██║██║   ██║
      ██║     ╚════██║██║██║   ██║
      ███████╗███████║██║╚██████╔╝
      ╚══════╝╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═════╝

   Brought to you by linuxserver.io
───────────────────────────────────────

To support LSIO projects visit:
https://www.linuxserver.io/donate/

───────────────────────────────────────
GID/UID
───────────────────────────────────────

User UID:    911
User GID:    911
───────────────────────────────────────
Linuxserver.io version: v25.11-ls226
Build-date: 2025-11-09T13:38:24+00:00
───────────────────────────────────────
    
using keys found in /config/keys
Waiting for DB to be available

   INFO  Preparing database.  

  Creating migration table ...................................... 58.25ms DONE

   INFO  Running migrations.  

  2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table ......................... 667.59ms DONE
  2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table ................ 80.94ms DONE
  2015_07_12_114933_create_books_table .......................... 20.88ms DONE
  2015_07_12_190027_create_pages_table .......................... 24.24ms DONE
  2015_07_13_172121_create_images_table ......................... 19.36ms DONE
  2015_07_27_172342_create_chapters_table ....................... 20.86ms DONE
  2015_08_08_200447_add_users_to_entities ...................... 177.96ms DONE
  2015_08_09_093534_create_page_revisions_table ................. 18.16ms DONE
  2015_08_16_142133_create_activities_table ..................... 24.53ms DONE
  2015_08_29_105422_add_roles_and_permissions .................. 527.23ms DONE
  2015_08_30_125859_create_settings_table ....................... 18.55ms DONE
  2015_08_31_175240_add_search_indexes ........................... 0.19ms DONE
  2015_09_04_165821_create_social_accounts_table ................ 84.44ms DONE
  2015_09_05_164707_add_email_confirmation_table ................ 97.63ms DONE
  2015_11_21_145609_create_views_table .......................... 22.73ms DONE
  2015_11_26_221857_add_entity_indexes ......................... 625.24ms DONE
  2015_12_05_145049_fulltext_weighting ........................... 0.19ms DONE
  2015_12_07_195238_add_image_upload_types ..................... 115.63ms DONE
  2015_12_09_195748_add_user_avatars ............................ 22.69ms DONE
  2016_01_11_210908_add_external_auth_to_users .................. 70.05ms DONE
  2016_02_25_184030_add_slug_to_revisions ...................... 112.26ms DONE
  2016_02_27_120329_update_permissions_and_roles ............... 363.58ms DONE
  2016_02_28_084200_add_entity_access_controls ................. 323.97ms DONE
  2016_03_09_203143_add_page_revision_types ..................... 57.57ms DONE
  2016_03_13_082138_add_page_drafts ............................. 57.09ms DONE
  2016_03_25_123157_add_markdown_support ........................ 49.11ms DONE
  2016_04_09_100730_add_view_permissions_to_roles ............... 83.06ms DONE
  2016_04_20_192649_create_joint_permissions_table ............. 469.05ms DONE
  2016_05_06_185215_create_tags_table .......................... 185.16ms DONE
  2016_07_07_181521_add_summary_to_page_revisions ............... 40.01ms DONE
  2016_09_29_101449_remove_hidden_roles ........................ 146.74ms DONE
  2016_10_09_142037_create_attachments_table ................... 149.55ms DONE
  2017_01_21_163556_create_cache_table .......................... 82.17ms DONE
  2017_01_21_163602_create_sessions_table ....................... 77.74ms DONE
  2017_03_19_091553_create_search_index_table .................. 179.28ms DONE
  2017_04_20_185112_add_revision_counts ......................... 79.91ms DONE
  2017_07_02_152834_update_db_encoding_to_ut8mb4 ................. 0.19ms DONE
  2017_08_01_130541_create_comments_table ...................... 135.10ms DONE
  2017_08_29_102650_add_cover_image_display ..................... 21.42ms DONE
  2018_07_15_173514_add_role_external_auth_id ................... 55.38ms DONE
  2018_08_04_115700_create_bookshelves_table ................... 566.82ms DONE
  2019_07_07_112515_add_template_support ........................ 63.24ms DONE
  2019_08_17_140214_add_user_invites_table ...................... 82.07ms DONE
  2019_12_29_120917_add_api_auth ............................... 126.73ms DONE
  2020_08_04_111754_drop_joint_permissions_id .................. 159.07ms DONE
  2020_08_04_131052_remove_role_name_field ...................... 24.62ms DONE
  2020_09_19_094251_add_activity_indexes ........................ 65.42ms DONE
  2020_09_27_210059_add_entity_soft_deletes ..................... 86.23ms DONE
  2020_09_27_210528_create_deletions_table ..................... 121.77ms DONE
  2020_11_07_232321_simplify_activities_table .................. 194.64ms DONE
  2020_12_30_173528_add_owned_by_field_to_entities ............. 251.90ms DONE
  2021_01_30_225441_add_settings_type_column .................... 21.65ms DONE
  2021_03_08_215138_add_user_slug ............................... 70.83ms DONE
  2021_05_15_173110_create_favourites_table ..................... 81.04ms DONE
  2021_06_30_173111_create_mfa_values_table ..................... 88.19ms DONE
  2021_07_03_085038_add_mfa_enforced_to_roles_table ............. 21.76ms DONE
  2021_08_28_161743_add_export_role_permission .................. 10.67ms DONE
  2021_09_26_044614_add_activities_ip_column .................... 32.05ms DONE
  2021_11_26_070438_add_index_for_user_ip ....................... 30.51ms DONE
  2021_12_07_111343_create_webhooks_table ...................... 154.48ms DONE
  2021_12_13_152024_create_jobs_table ........................... 50.93ms DONE
  2021_12_13_152120_create_failed_jobs_table .................... 48.84ms DONE
  2022_01_03_154041_add_webhooks_timeout_error_columns .......... 89.64ms DONE
  2022_04_17_101741_add_editor_change_field_and_permission ...... 33.44ms DONE
  2022_04_25_140741_update_polymorphic_types .................... 57.77ms DONE
  2022_07_16_170051_drop_joint_permission_type ................. 186.49ms DONE
  2022_08_17_092941_create_references_table .................... 141.81ms DONE
  2022_09_02_082910_fix_shelf_cover_image_types .................. 2.90ms DONE
  2022_10_07_091406_flatten_entity_permissions_table ........... 125.30ms DONE
  2022_10_08_104202_drop_entity_restricted_field ............... 166.61ms DONE
  2023_01_24_104625_refactor_joint_permissions_storage ......... 244.16ms DONE
  2023_01_28_141230_copy_color_settings_for_dark_mode ............ 4.60ms DONE
  2023_02_20_093655_increase_attachments_path_length ............ 87.74ms DONE
  2023_02_23_200227_add_updated_at_index_to_pages ............... 42.10ms DONE
  2023_06_10_071823_remove_guest_user_secondary_roles ........... 11.39ms DONE
  2023_06_25_181952_remove_bookshelf_create_entity_permissions ... 0.22ms DONE
  2023_07_25_124945_add_receive_notifications_role_permissions .. 15.29ms DONE
  2023_07_31_104430_create_watches_table ....................... 187.57ms DONE
  2023_08_21_174248_increase_cache_size ......................... 61.49ms DONE
  2023_12_02_104541_add_default_template_to_books ............... 34.97ms DONE
  2023_12_17_140913_add_description_html_to_entities ........... 104.03ms DONE
  2024_01_01_104542_add_default_template_to_chapters ............ 32.17ms DONE
  2024_02_04_141358_add_views_updated_index ..................... 28.52ms DONE
  2024_05_04_154409_rename_activity_relation_columns ............ 45.14ms DONE
  2024_09_29_140340_ensure_editor_value_set ...................... 8.12ms DONE
  2024_10_29_114420_add_import_role_permission .................. 10.98ms DONE
  2024_11_02_160700_create_imports_table ........................ 49.08ms DONE
  2024_11_27_171039_add_instance_id_setting ..................... 24.22ms DONE
  2025_01_29_180933_create_sort_rules_table ..................... 17.17ms DONE
  2025_02_05_150842_add_sort_rule_id_to_books ................... 28.48ms DONE
  2025_04_18_215145_add_content_refs_and_archived_to_comments ... 82.05ms DONE
  2025_09_02_111542_remove_unused_columns ....................... 82.37ms DONE
  2025_09_15_132850_create_entities_table ...................... 350.99ms DONE
  2025_09_15_134701_migrate_entity_data ......................... 40.35ms DONE
  2025_09_15_134751_update_entity_relation_columns ................... 1s DONE
  2025_09_15_134813_drop_old_entity_tables ...................... 70.10ms DONE
  2025_10_18_163331_clean_user_id_references ................... 705.67ms DONE
  2025_10_22_134507_update_comments_relation_field_names ........ 42.70ms DONE

[custom-init] No custom files found, skipping...
[ls.io-init] done.

[github-actions]

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[ssddanbrown]

Hi @pascas23,

It looks like you restored an older BookStack version database backup into a more recent database structure. This will cause problems.

It's important that you restore your older backup into a completely empty database instance first, then (and only then) start-up the BookStack container, which would then auto-run migrations on start-up and update your database state to the latest version.

Keep your old backups super safe until you get things working!

[pascas23]

Hi @pascas23,

It looks like you restored an older BookStack version database backup into a more recent database structure. This will cause problems.

It's important that you restore your older backup into a completely empty database instance first, then (and only then) start-up the BookStack container, which would then auto-run migrations on start-up and update your database state to the latest version.

Keep your old backups super safe until you get things working!

Amazing, it was that simple. God bless you, you saved my day.