TLDR: Change the APP_ENV variable from "production" to "local".
I spun up Ubuntu servers with mariadb databases and followed several different install docs. I ended up documenting this after the 20-25th go around and figured out that using local instead of production in the APP_ENV was the only way to get the web interface to fully load and allow me to register a monica crm username/password. I then replicated this back to the docker container and it started working.
https://computingforgeeks.com/install-monica-crm-on-ubuntu-debian/
https://github.com/monicahq/monica/blob/master/docs/installation/faq.md
### ROOT USER ###
apt update && apt -y upgrade && apt install -y git php php-intl php-json php-cli php-fpm php-mysql php-zip php-gd php-mbstring php-curl php-xml php-pear php-bcmath php-redis php-gmp && apt install -y composer && apt install -y software-properties-common && apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8 && add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64,arm64,ppc64el] http://mariadb.mirror.liquidtelecom.com/repo/10.4/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main" && apt update && apt -y install mariadb-server mariadb-client
mysql_secure_installation
mysql -u root -p
##
CREATE USER 'monicaUser' IDENTIFIED by '<PASSWORD>';
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS monicahq CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_general_ci;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON monicahq.* TO 'monicaUser' IDENTIFIED BY '<PASSWORD>';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
##
### NON ROOT ###
cd /srv
git clone https://github.com/monicahq/monica.git
cd monica
cp .env.example .env
vim .env
##
APP_URL=http://IP
DB_DATABASE=monicahq
DB_USERNAME=monicaUser
DB_PASSWORD=<PASSWORD>
APP_DISABLE_SIGNUP=false
##
composer install --no-interaction --no-suggest --no-dev
php artisan key:generate
php artisan setup:production
php artisan passport:install
php artisan schedule:run
echo "* * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/monica/artisan schedule:run" | sudo tee /etc/cron.d/monica
### ROOT ###
apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php
a2enmod rewrite
systemctl restart apache2
vim /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/monica.conf
##
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName IP
ServerAdmin
[email protected]
DocumentRoot /srv/monica/public
<Directory /srv/monica/public>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/monica_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/monica_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
##
chown -R www-data:www-data /srv/monica
chmod -R 775 /srv/monica/storage
apachectl -t
systemctl restart apache2