Error loading groups

[FFWGA]

Once Argus was installed, it worked perfectly.
A few reboots / days later, I always get the "Error loading groups" message when I click "Go to Projects" from the home page. All Docker containers are up. I'm using Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS.

Unfortunately, running ./argus.sh up --build didn't change anything either.
I've also already tried running ./argus.sh down and then up.
Without success.

Is it possible that the software somehow registers with the network or Wi-Fi during installation?
Because I've been able to narrow down the problem.

As soon as I connect to the Wi-Fi network where I installed Argus, it works perfectly. On any other Wi-Fi network (even those with internet access), I get the error mentioned above.

[SchulteM42]

@FFWGA Thanks for the detailed report. Yes, this is most likely related to the IP address / URL that Argus stores during setup.

The Argus Web UI talks to the backend API through the VITE_API_URL value in the .env file. If Argus was installed while your machine was connected to one Wi-Fi network, this value may point to the local IP address from that network. When you later connect to another Wi-Fi network, your machine gets a different local IP address, so the Web UI may still try to reach the old backend address. In that case, the frontend cannot load the project/group data and you see the Error loading groups message.

This behavior is known and partly intentional. Since this issue was anticipated, Argus already provides flags that allow you to update the stored URLs.

For a quick fix, please run:

./argus.sh --update-api-url up

If you also use WebODM through Argus, run:

./argus.sh --update-all-urls up

These flags rewrite the stored URLs in .env using the current local IP address before starting Argus.

The relevant flags are:

--update-api-url      Updates VITE_API_URL
--update-webodm-url   Updates WEBODM_URL
--update-all-urls     Updates both

So in your case, switching Wi-Fi networks changes the local IP, and Argus needs to refresh the backend URL accordingly.

I will also update the README to make this behavior clearer. It seems to be outdated at the moment — sorry for the inconvenience. I may add a .env option in the future that lets users choose whether Argus should automatically refresh these URLs on every start, so the flag does not have to be passed manually each time.

Please let me know if this resolves your issue.