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Self-hosting my photos with Immich

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#201

Post by terminalgravity »

fsh wrote: post #108

My biggest worry with Immich is how to future-proof the albums. With photos sorted into folders, it should be no problem to access them in a couple of decades. With Immich, I have to rely on the software still working or finding some kind of tool to dump the database.

I use photosync to upload to a folder that is an external library for immich. Immich then periodically scans that folder to load new assests. I usually use digikam to manipulate that folder. Immich is there just for easy remote browsing of those files.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#202

Post by palata »

volemo wrote: post #170
palata wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS, does it keep syncing if you "swipe away" the app and never open it for e.g. a couple months? I really would like something like this.

As far as I understand iOS’s behaviour, there’s no way to do what you’re asking unless you’re Apple Inc.

The Nextcloud app kind of does it, it seems. The fact that it stops working seems unrelated: starting the app doesn't make it recover, so it just seems buggy.

Nextcloud uses the location permission for some reason, presumably to wake up the app in the background once in a while? At least it can be closed (and "swiped away") for 2 months and keep syncing. Until it breaks and stops working entirely.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#203

Post by hosteur »

renegade-otter wrote: post #181

Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing. If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done. Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Pho…

What? It is literally just start the container and forget. When upgrading it is change the version tag and restart the container.

Upgrades are frequent but no hassle.

I have been running this for half a year. It might have been more work earlier?

My household is using this for our shared photos repository and everyone can use it. Even the kids.

There is both direct web access and an iPhone app.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#204

Post by wobfan »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #183
renegade-otter wrote: post #181

Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing. If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done. Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Pho…

I was just telling a nonprofit the other day, who in the name of “self hosting” was running their business on a 73 plugin WordPress site: Move to Shopify and LearnWorlds. Integrate the two. Stop self hosting. (They’re not large enough to do it well; and it already caused them a two week outage.)

> Move to Shopify and LearnWorlds.

Having seen a lot of companies and startups doinge exactly that, more of less everyone regrets it. Either you end up with such a lot of traffic through these vendors that you'll regret it financially, or you want to change some specific part of your page or your purchase process, which Shopify doesn't let you change, and you'll end up needing to switch or be sad, or, as I regularly have to (because we don't get the resources and time to switch): try to manipulate the site through some weird hacky Javascript snippets that manipulate the DOM after it loaded.

It's literally always the same. They get you running in no time, and in no time you're locked into their ecosystem: No customization if they don't want it; pricing won't scale and just randomly changes without any justification; if you do something they don't like they'll just shut you down.

> Stop self hosting.

Worst mantra of the century. Leading to huge dependencies, vendor lock ins, monopolies, price gauging. This is only a good idea for a prototype, and only as long as you'll not gonna run the prototype indefinitely but will eventually replace it. And maybe for one-person-companies who just want to get going and don't have resources for this.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#205

Post by crote »

em-bee wrote: post #198
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just telling a nonprofit the other day, who in the name of “self hosting” was running their business on a 73 plugin WordPress site: Move to Shopify and LearnWorlds. Integrate the two. Stop self hosting. (They’re not large enough to do it well; and it already caused them a two week outage.)

disagree. as the sister comment mentions, wordpress may have been the wrong choice, but self hosting is never wrong, especially for a non profit who may not have the resources to deal with a situation if a hosting service decides to shut them out.

If they don't have the resources to switch to a different hosting provider, why do you assume they will have the resources to fix things when their self-host solution shits the bed?

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#206

Post by BatteryMountain »

renegade-otter wrote: post #181

Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing. If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done. Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Pho…

Actually, I've setup a proxmox server last week that run a couple of self-hosted application. I've nextcloud running and it was fairly easy to setup. The next item on my list WAS Immich. I decided against trying to deploy it. The reason is simple: they are essentially forcing the use of Docker, which I won't touch at at all. Either a native proxmox container (which is just lxc) or a proper VM, but I keep those in reserve as they can be heavy. I'm not asking of them to create a native package for debian or a container image; a simple install script that bootstraps the application (checks & install itself and dependencies), bootstrap the database and basic config (data directory, url & ports, admin password) is more than enough. The same script should be use to update the application if possible, or provide an updater on the admin panel to update the application without manual steps or data migrations. Adguard Home does all of this perfectly in my opinion. I know Immich thinks they are making things "easier" to just dump everything into a docker container, but some of us wont touch it at all. Same reason I avoid any projects that heavily relies on nodejs/npm ecosystem.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#207

Post by ttoinou »

renegade-otter wrote: post #181

Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing. If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done. Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Pho…

Couldnt Immich be used by a paid service provider to provide Immich google-free photo hosting ?

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#208

Post by wobfan »

crote wrote: post #205
em-bee wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disagree. as the sister comment mentions, wordpress may have been the wrong choice, but self hosting is never wrong, especially for a non profit who may not have the resources to deal with a situation if a hosting service decides to shut them out.

If they don't have the resources to switch to a different hosting provider, why do you assume they will have the resources to fix things when their self-host solution shits the bed?

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Switching the ecosystem from something like Shopify to some other shop software requires a lot of manual work, and some of the stuff won't even be transferable 1:1.

Fixing some issue with your WordPress installation will require a person who can google and knows a little stuff about webservers, and maybe containers, and will usually go pretty fast, as WordPress is open source and runs almost half the internet, and almost every problem that will come up will have been solved in some StackOverflow thread or GitHub issue.

Usually though, if you run WordPress and you're not doing a lot of hacky stuff, you will not encounter problems. Vendors shutting you down, increasing their pricing, or shutting down vital features in their software, happens regularly though. And if it happens, shit hits the fan.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#209

Post by getlawgdon »

hosteur wrote: post #203
renegade-otter wrote: post #181

Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing. If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done. Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Pho…

What? It is literally just start the container and forget. When upgrading it is change the version tag and restart the container. Upgrades are frequent but no hassle. I have been running this for half a year. It might have been more work earlier? My household is using this for our shared photos repository and everyone can use it. Even the kids. There is both direct web access and an iPhone app.

There is an Android app, too.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#210

Post by thanzex »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #206
renegade-otter wrote: post #181

Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing. If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done. Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Pho…

Actually, I've setup a proxmox server last week that run a couple of self-hosted application. I've nextcloud running and it was fairly easy to setup. The next item on my list WAS Immich. I decided against trying to deploy it. The reason is simple: they are essentially forcing the use of Docker, which I won't touch at at all. Either a native proxmox container (which is just lxc) or a proper VM, but I keep those in res…

I really don't understand this take. A script that installs all required dependencies is fine if and only if you are dedicating a machine to immich. It probably requires some version of node, with possibly hidden dependencies on some python, it uses ffmpeg, so all related libraries and executables need to be there. You then have a couple separate DBs, all communicating together. Let's not talk about updates! What if you're skipping versions? Now your "simple install script" becomes a fragile behemoth. I would NOT consider this if it was non docker-native. Plus, I don't have a server with enough resources for a lot of VMs, with all of their overhead and complications, just to have one per service. Nowadays there are many ways to run a container not just the original docker.com software, and you can do that on pretty much any platform. Even Android now!
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