# Database needs bootstrapping problem

**URL:** <https://discuss.konghq.com/t/database-needs-bootstrapping-problem/13718>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [September 8, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://discuss.konghq.com/t/database-needs-bootstrapping-problem/13718 "2025-09-08T14:49:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![edo\_nick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f04885/32.png) [@edo\_nick](https://discuss.konghq.com/u/edo_nick)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://discuss.konghq.com/t/database-needs-bootstrapping-problem/13718/1 "2025-09-08T14:49:09Z")

</div>

Installing Kong in Kubernetes I got this errors in log

[warn] 1#0: the “user” directive makes sense only if the master process runs with super-user privileges, ignored in /usr/local/kong/nginx.conf:7  
nginx: [warn] the “user” directive makes sense only if the master process runs with super-user privileges, ignored in /usr/local/kong/nginx.conf:7  
2025/09/08 14:30:23 [error] 1#0: init\_by\_lua error: /usr/local/share/lua/5.1/kong/cmd/utils/migrations.lua:16: Database needs bootstrapping or is older than Kong 1.0.

To start a new installation from scratch, run ‘kong migrations bootstrap’.

To migrate from a version older than 1.0, migrated to Kong 1.5.0 first.  
If you still have ‘apis’ entities, you can convert them to Routes and Services  
using the ‘kong migrations migrate-apis’ command in Kong 1.5.0.

stack traceback:  
[C]: in function ‘error’  
/usr/local/share/lua/5.1/kong/cmd/utils/migrations.lua:16: in function ‘check\_state’  
/usr/local/share/lua/5.1/kong/init.lua:668: in function ‘init’  
init\_by\_lua(nginx-kong.conf:44):3: in main chunk  
nginx: [error] init\_by\_lua error: /usr/local/share/lua/5.1/kong/cmd/utils/migrations.lua:16: Database needs bootstrapping or is older than Kong 1.0

But my version of DB is “PostgreSQL 17.5 on x86\_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian 12.2.0-14+deb12u1) 12.2.0, 64-bit”

Edit:  
I have tried to disable migration. (I do not understand why migration would be useful for clean install.)  
I have set migrations preUpgrade/postUpgrade: false  
Now I get this:

> Normal Pulled 4m43s kubelet Successfully pulled image “kong:3.9” in 15.233s (15.233s including waiting). Image size: 120417792 bytes.  
> Warning Unhealthy 4m38s kubelet Liveness probe failed: Get “[http://192.168.xxx.xxx:8100/status”:](http://192.168.xxx.xxx:8100/status%E2%80%9D:) dial tcp 192.168.xxx.xxx:8100: connect: connection refused  
> Warning Unhealthy 4m38s kubelet Readiness probe failed: Get “[http://192.168.xxx.xxx:8100/status/ready”:](http://192.168.xxx.xxx:8100/status/ready%E2%80%9D:) dial tcp 192.168.xxx.xxx:8100: connect: connection refused  
> Normal Created 3m39s (x4 over 4m43s) kubelet Created container: kong  
> Normal Started 3m39s (x4 over 4m43s) kubelet Started container kong  
> Warning BackOff 3m3s (x9 over 4m32s) kubelet Back-off restarting failed container kong in pod mykong-kong-gateway-547c586b97-86wnj\_nczi-ope-kong(56a85718-9851-4774-946e-57723c387cf1)