Connector works within Intellij 'run', but not in jar

Problem while upgrading legacy application from Java-8 to 17 (modular) in Intellij with Gradle. MariaDB running in NAS. The application worked in Java-8 and in Intellij task 'run' perfectly. But in task 'jar' I get:

java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:mariadb:192.168.2.24:3306/ChainPro at java.sql/java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:706) at java.sql/java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:190) at com.papaworx.chainpro_m.utilities.GConnection.<init>(GConnection.java:112) at com.papaworx.chainpro_m.Main.start(Main.java:83) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.lambda$launchApplication1$9(LauncherImpl.java:847) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runAndWait$12(PlatformImpl.java:484) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runLater$10(PlatformImpl.java:457) at java.base/java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(AccessController.java:399) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runLater$11(PlatformImpl.java:456) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.glass.ui.InvokeLaterDispatcher$Future.run$$$capture(InvokeLaterDispatcher.java:96) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.glass.ui.InvokeLaterDispatcher$Future.run(InvokeLaterDispatcher.java) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.glass.ui.gtk.GtkApplication._runLoop(Native Method) at javafx.graphics@19/com.sun.glass.ui.gtk.GtkApplication.lambda$runLoop$11(GtkApplication.java:316) at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:833)

running ./gradlew jpackage --scan showed no errors and completed successfully.