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Self-hosting my photos with Immich

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#281

Post by mk12 »

trizic wrote: post #56

There is something to be said about NixOS, it really is a matter of setting `services.immich.enable = true;` in a configuration file. I find this really powerful and simpler than docker and docker-compose. But don't get me wrong, I am all for containerization when it comes to other OS/distros. Yes, there is a learning curve for the Nix language and creating your own packages. But anyone who can install a distro can i…

I hope someone will create a Debian package for Immich. I’m running a bunch of services and they are all nicely organized with user foo, /var/lib/foo, journalctl -u foo, systemctl start foo, except for Immich which is the odd one out needing docker compose. The nix package shows it can be done but it would probably be a fair amount of work to translate to a Debian package.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#283

Post by phito »

candiddevmike wrote: post #214
hosteur wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Idk maintaining the PG vector extensions has been kind of a pain in the ass, at least from an automation perspective

these are all cases of PEBCAK

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#284

Post by jbstack »

teekert wrote: post #133
wwarek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you update the software in the containers when new versions come out or vulnerabilities are actively being exploited? You build new image with updated/patched versions of packages and then replace your vulnerable container with a new one, created from new image

Am I the only one surprised that this is a serious discussion in 2025?

I refer you to:

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#285

Post by bayindirh »

mk12 wrote: post #281
trizic wrote: post #56

There is something to be said about NixOS, it really is a matter of setting `services.immich.enable = true;` in a configuration file. I find this really powerful and simpler than docker and docker-compose. But don't get me wrong, I am all for containerization when it comes to other OS/distros. Yes, there is a learning curve for the Nix language and creating your own packages. But anyone who can install a distro can i…

I hope someone will create a Debian package for Immich. I’m running a bunch of services and they are all nicely organized with user foo, /var/lib/foo, journalctl -u foo, systemctl start foo, except for Immich which is the odd one out needing docker compose. The nix package shows it can be done but it would probably be a fair amount of work to translate to a Debian package.

I'll try to install in a short-ish while, and look into its installation in a detailed manner.

I may try to package it, and if it proves to be easy to maintain, I might file an ITP.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#286

Post by stryan »

mk12 wrote: post #281
trizic wrote: post #56

There is something to be said about NixOS, it really is a matter of setting `services.immich.enable = true;` in a configuration file. I find this really powerful and simpler than docker and docker-compose. But don't get me wrong, I am all for containerization when it comes to other OS/distros. Yes, there is a learning curve for the Nix language and creating your own packages. But anyone who can install a distro can i…

I hope someone will create a Debian package for Immich. I’m running a bunch of services and they are all nicely organized with user foo, /var/lib/foo, journalctl -u foo, systemctl start foo, except for Immich which is the odd one out needing docker compose. The nix package shows it can be done but it would probably be a fair amount of work to translate to a Debian package.

You could try setting it up as a Podman Quadlets, those hook into systemd so you can treat them like a normal service.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#287

Post by newsoftheday »

Ambroisie wrote: post #130
cromka wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. No. You can easily checkout repo containing the Dockerfile, add a Dockerfile override, change most of the stuff while maintaining the original Dockerfile instact and the ability to use git to update it. Then you change one line in docker-compose.yaml (or override it if it's also hosted by the repo) and build the container locally. Can't imagine easier way to modify existing docker images, I do this a lot…

I'll be honest, that does not sound "easy". It is straightforward, but so is the NixOS module system, and I could describe writing a custom module the same way you described custom Docker images.

If it wasn't easy, I wouldn't be using it. I'm the laziest of programmers or users.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#288

Post by newsoftheday »

trizic wrote: post #56

There is something to be said about NixOS, it really is a matter of setting `services.immich.enable = true;` in a configuration file. I find this really powerful and simpler than docker and docker-compose. But don't get me wrong, I am all for containerization when it comes to other OS/distros. Yes, there is a learning curve for the Nix language and creating your own packages. But anyone who can install a distro can i…

> There is something to be said about NixOS

OK, I'll stick with Ubuntu + KDE (so Kubuntu really) on all my machines.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#289

Post by Groxx »

uzername wrote: post #219

I had immich running great for a while, maybe for months. It would seamlessly sync photos from phone to local home server. I was going to setup nightly outbound sync too (1 is none, 2 is some). I updated the container for usual appliance maintenance. Entire thing is toast. Metadata files can't be read, mounted, permission issues and more. It's been four months since.

> permission issues

as an un-solicited drive-by suggestion: see if they're owned by root? you may have sudo'd the original run.

since you're at least a few months behind though, do check for breaking changes: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions?discussions... they've pretty consistently had instructions, but you unfortunately mostly have to know to look for it. not sure why the upgrade notification doesn't make it super incredibly painfully obvious.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#290

Post by Groxx »

tgiba wrote: post #197

I use my Immich instance locally as photos and videos storage for 7-8 months now. It's really amazing. Reading comments here I'd say it's medium-difficulty tier to set up. I have it on my Elitedesk 800 G3 mini, in Docker Compose, with hardware encoding and it's more than sufficient to handle this work. Never had a bug.

As a counter-anecdote: literally just `docker compose up` on a spare laptop for me, and it's working great (though it's only available on the local network). There might be stuff to tune (e.g. I'm pretty sure it's not using my GPU), but it's almost totally unnecessary for just one household of people's use - the initial huge google-photos-takeout took an hour or three to finish indexing with all the features enabled, but all new stuff is done within seconds. The most I've done is to swap the actual photo storage to an external drive, which is just a "move that folder, custom mapping in the docker command" change.

On hardware that doesn't have docker, or is significantly more resource constrained somehow: yea, I completely believe it. I haven't tried that, but given the features it makes total sense that it'd be harder.

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