Hello everyone! I'm struggling with a Laravel deployment and would be incredibly grateful for any insights.

The Problem:
My Laravel service consistently fails to connect to the managed MySQL service with a SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused error. This happens during the php artisan migrate step in my startup script.

What I've already tried and confirmed:

1. Network Reachability is OK: My entrypoint script uses netcat to wait for the database port, and it successfully connects. The deploy log clearly shows:

   Generated code

   Connection to mysql.railway.internal:3306 ... succeeded!

   Use code with caution.

   The connection is refused only at the application (PDO) level, after the network path is confirmed to be open.

2. Environment Variables are Correct:

   • I've double- and triple-checked that DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_DATABASE in my Laravel service perfectly match the credentials provided by the MySQL service.

   • I've also tried using the full DATABASE_URL string directly, with the same result.

3. SSL/TLS:

   • We suspected an SSL issue. We tried setting DB_SSLMODE=REQUIRED and also MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA=/etc/ssl/certs/railway.pem. Neither resolved the issue.

4. Docker Setup:

   • The container builds successfully. We are using a multi-stage Dockerfile.

   • The final image runs an entrypoint.sh script that prepares the storage volume and then starts php-fpm and nginx.

   • The entrypoint.shsuccessfully creates the storage/logs/laravel.log file, but because the migrate command fails, the container never reaches a healthy state, so I can't inspect the file afterwards.

Here is the simplified entrypoint.sh that demonstrates the issue:

Generated bash

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# Wait for DB
while ! nc -z -w2 $DB_HOST $DB_PORT; do sleep 2; done
echo "Database is ready!"

# This next line is where it fails
php artisan migrate --force

# These lines are never reached
php-fpm &
nginx -g "daemon off;"

Use code with caution.Bash

I'm out of ideas. It feels like there's a specific configuration or policy in the Railway environment that's blocking the PDO connection, even though the port is open. Has anyone encountered something similar?

Any help would be massively appreciated!