[Problem] : Container Zabbix-Frontend-Apache Mysql | PHP_CONFIG_FILE

[Samxtnz]

Hello everyone,
today i have updated my containers to the latest zabbix :
zabbix-server-mysql and Zabbix-Frontend-Apache , and my MYSQL container v: 10.11

the 2 containers MySQL and Server are running Health and everything okay,
but with the frontend, and for the first time Im having this problem :
/usr/lib/docker-entrypoint/php.sh: line 9: PHP_CONFIG_FILE: unbound variable

full log :

2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: ** Preparing Zabbix web-interface (Apache) with MySQL database
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: ** Using MYSQL_USER variable from ENV
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: ** Using MYSQL_PASSWORD variable from ENV
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: ********************
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: * DB_SERVER_HOST: 10.0.0.3
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: * DB_SERVER_PORT: 3306
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: * DB_SERVER_DBNAME: zabbix
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: ********************
2026-04-16T15:04:58Z [info]: ** Preparing PHP configuration
/usr/lib/docker-entrypoint/php.sh: line 9: PHP_CONFIG_FILE: unbound variable

[Samxtnz]

Hi everyone,

I managed to solve this issue, so I'm posting the fix here in case anyone else runs into it.

Root cause:
This is a breaking change introduced in Zabbix 7.4.9. The entrypoint script `/usr/lib/docker-entrypoint/php.sh` was updated to reference a new environment variable called `PHP_CONFIG_FILE`, which was not required in previous versions. The old variable `PHP_ZBX_CONFIG_FILE` is still present in the image ENV but is no longer read by the script.

This only affects users running `latest` tag who got auto-updated to 7.4.9.

Fix:
Add the `PHP_CONFIG_FILE` environment variable to your `zabbix-frontend` service in `docker-compose.yml`:

yaml

environment:
- PHP_CONFIG_FILE=/etc/php85/php-fpm.d/zabbix.conf

The path should match what you have in `PHP_ZBX_CONFIG_FILE` (for the Alpine/Apache image with PHP 8.5 it is `/etc/php85/php-fpm.d/zabbix.conf`).

Then recreate the container:

docker compose up -d --force-recreate zabbix-frontend

The frontend came back up immediately after that.

Hope this helps!

[johnson.fontenele]

I'm having the same problem with the tag alpine-7.0-latest. As a workaround, I deployed my environment using the tag alpine-7.0.25.

[Samxtnz]

Hi everyone,

I managed to solve this issue, so I'm posting the fix here in case anyone else runs into it.

Root cause:
This is a breaking change introduced in Zabbix 7.4.9. The entrypoint script `/usr/lib/docker-entrypoint/php.sh` was updated to reference a new environment variable called `PHP_CONFIG_FILE`, which was not required in previous versions. The old variable `PHP_ZBX_CONFIG_FILE` is still present in the image ENV but is no longer read by the script.

This only affects users running `latest` tag who got auto-updated to 7.4.9.

Fix:
Add the `PHP_CONFIG_FILE` environment variable to your `zabbix-frontend` service in `docker-compose.yml`:

yaml

environment:
- PHP_CONFIG_FILE=/etc/php85/php-fpm.d/zabbix.conf

The path should match what you have in `PHP_ZBX_CONFIG_FILE` (for the Alpine/Apache image with PHP 8.5 it is `/etc/php85/php-fpm.d/zabbix.conf`).

Then recreate the container:

docker compose up -d --force-recreate zabbix-frontend

The frontend came back up immediately after that.

Hope this helps!