Install fails due to corepack sqlite readonly

Developer help Installation
1

My install (blog.leonhassan.co.uk) was recently the victim to the injection exploit for <v6, after attempting to recover I decided to reinstall fresh and skip all of major version migrations (with backups taken), however after attempting a clean install I am facing an issue where when I run ghost install it fails during the dependencies install stage with the following error:

✖ Downloading and installing Ghost v6.49.0
A ProcessError occurred.

Message: Command failed: corepack pnpm install --prod --reporter=append-only
file:///home/leon/.cache/node/corepack/v1/pnpm/11.8.0/dist/pnpm.mjs:54334
throw err2;
^

Error: attempt to write a readonly database
at file:///home/leon/.cache/node/corepack/v1/pnpm/11.8.0/dist/pnpm.mjs:54521:26
at sqliteRetry (file:///home/leon/.cache/node/corepack/v1/pnpm/11.8.0/dist/pnpm.mjs:54328:14)
at StoreIndex.setRawMany (file:///home/leon/.cache/node/corepack/v1/pnpm/11.8.0/dist/pnpm.mjs:54520:11)
at StoreIndex.flush (file:///home/leon/.cache/node/corepack/v1/pnpm/11.8.0/dist/pnpm.mjs:54509:14)
at file:///home/leon/.cache/node/corepack/v1/pnpm/11.8.0/dist/pnpm.mjs:54499:39
at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:84:11) {
code: 'ERR_SQLITE_ERROR',
errcode: 8,
errstr: 'attempt to write a readonly database'
}

Node.js v22.22.2

My old install used sqlite3, but I have removed it and installed mysql instead as recommended for self-hosting. I haven’t found anything that should point corepack to sqlite that I have done so I’m quite confused on what the next steps should be to move past the issue.

I am hosting on Ubuntu v22.04 and I have tried installing sqlite3, which made no difference when rerunning the ghost install.

Appreciate the help in getting my blog back on it’s feet, thanks in advance.

2

Hmm, this appears to be an issue we hadn’t really considered with having Ghost-CLI default to corepack for pnpm use :thinking:

What happens if you try the following to install pnpm globally?

curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -

(taken from the pnpm.io docs).

That should hopefully get pnpm installed globally, and ghost-cli will use that rather than try to use pnpm from corepack.

3

Hi Austin, thanks for the info. I’ve installed pnpm (and libatomic1 dependency), reran ghost install and get a very similar error, but now from pnpm:

✖ Downloading and installing Ghost v6.49.0
A ProcessError occurred.

Message: Command failed: pnpm install --prod --reporter=append-only
file:///home/leon/.local/share/pnpm/store/v11/links/@pnpm/exe/11.9.0/ba7d0e4593f839f8a3f4faa2799a55b36b1d97f7709b79c6ede2aec641e668fe/node_modules/@pnpm/exe/dist/pnpm.mjs:54545
      throw err2;
      ^

Error: attempt to write a readonly database
    at file:///home/leon/.local/share/pnpm/store/v11/links/@pnpm/exe/11.9.0/ba7d0e4593f839f8a3f4faa2799a55b36b1d97f7709b79c6ede2aec641e668fe/node_modules/@pnpm/exe/dist/pnpm.mjs:54732:26
    at sqliteRetry (file:///home/leon/.local/share/pnpm/store/v11/links/@pnpm/exe/11.9.0/ba7d0e4593f839f8a3f4faa2799a55b36b1d97f7709b79c6ede2aec641e668fe/node_modules/@pnpm/exe/dist/pnpm.mjs:54539:14)
    at StoreIndex.setRawMany (file:///home/leon/.local/share/pnpm/store/v11/links/@pnpm/exe/11.9.0/ba7d0e4593f839f8a3f4faa2799a55b36b1d97f7709b79c6ede2aec641e668fe/node_modules/@pnpm/exe/dist/pnpm.mjs:54731:11)
    at StoreIndex.flush (file:///home/leon/.local/share/pnpm/store/v11/links/@pnpm/exe/11.9.0/ba7d0e4593f839f8a3f4faa2799a55b36b1d97f7709b79c6ede2aec641e668fe/node_modules/@pnpm/exe/dist/pnpm.mjs:54720:14)
    at file:///home/leon/.local/share/pnpm/store/v11/links/@pnpm/exe/11.9.0/ba7d0e4593f839f8a3f4faa2799a55b36b1d97f7709b79c6ede2aec641e668fe/node_modules/@pnpm/exe/dist/pnpm.mjs:54710:39
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:85:11) {
  code: 'ERR_SQLITE_ERROR',
  errcode: 8,
  errstr: 'attempt to write a readonly database'
}

Node.js v26.0.0


Exit code: 1


Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v24.04.4 LTS
    Node Version: v22.22.2
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.29.3
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost install'

I’ve still got no idea why it’s trying to use sqlite over mysql, unless this is something internal to pnpm?

4

Yeah this appears to be an issue internal to pnpm, I’ll look and see if there’s a way we can fix this in Ghost-CLI.

5

Hi Austin, any update or ETA? :crossed_fingers:

6

Apologies, totally meant to look at this and got sidetracked :confused: will make sure to look today or tomorrow

7

No sweat, appreciate you looking into it! Thanks :grin:

8

Ok, I just published a new Ghost-CLI version 1.30.0 - can you try installing/using that version to see if it fixes the issue?

9

The updated version is working, thank you very much Austin! Have a great weekend :grin: