Goyban
122 lines
6.0 KiB
Markdown
122 lines
6.0 KiB
Markdown
# Immich
|
|
|
|
Self-hosted photo and video library. Phone backup that runs on your own disk,
|
|
with the parts that make Google Photos worth using — face and object search,
|
|
places, memories, shared albums — done locally by a machine-learning container.
|
|
|
|
The heaviest stack in this repo: four containers, a Postgres with vector
|
|
extensions, and a model cache. Budget a few GB of RAM and expect the first
|
|
import to work the CPU hard.
|
|
|
|
## Quick start
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
cp .env.example .env
|
|
$EDITOR .env # UPLOAD_LOCATION, DB_DATA_LOCATION, DB_PASSWORD
|
|
docker compose up -d
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Open `http://<host>:2283` and register. **The first account created is the
|
|
admin** — there is no separate bootstrap step, so do this before the port is
|
|
reachable by anyone else.
|
|
|
|
## Ports
|
|
|
|
| Port | Proto | Purpose |
|
|
|------|-------|---------|
|
|
| 2283 | http | Web UI, mobile app API, everything |
|
|
|
|
Postgres and Valkey are reachable only on the stack's internal network.
|
|
|
|
## Why it looks like this
|
|
|
|
**This file is upstream's, verbatim, and should stay that way.** Immich ships a
|
|
`docker-compose.yml` with each release, pins two of its images *by digest*, and
|
|
changes the file between versions — the mount path, the Postgres extension
|
|
build, added `shm_size`. Local edits turn every update into a three-way merge.
|
|
The repo convention of `${VAR:-default}` is deliberately **not** applied here for
|
|
the same reason: keeping it byte-identical to upstream means you can re-fetch and
|
|
`diff` to see exactly what a release changed.
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
curl -fLo /tmp/immich-new.yml \
|
|
https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
|
|
diff -u compose.yaml /tmp/immich-new.yml
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Pinned at **v3.2.2** (released 2026-09-15).
|
|
|
|
**Four containers.** `immich-server` is the API and web UI. `immich-machine-learning`
|
|
runs the CLIP and face-detection models — it is separate because it is the part
|
|
you might want on a GPU, and because its model cache is a named volume rather
|
|
than something you back up. `database` is Postgres with **VectorChord**, which
|
|
is what makes similarity search possible; a stock Postgres image will not work.
|
|
`redis` is Valkey, the Redis fork, used as the job queue.
|
|
|
|
**`env_file: .env` is a hard dependency.** Unlike every other stack here, where
|
|
`.env` is optional because the compose file carries defaults, Compose will refuse
|
|
to start this one if the file does not exist.
|
|
|
|
**Images are digest-pinned** for Valkey and Postgres
|
|
(`@sha256:…`), so those two are byte-identical to what upstream tested against
|
|
this release. The Immich images themselves float on `${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}`
|
|
— which is why pinning `IMMICH_VERSION` in `.env` matters.
|
|
|
|
## Gotchas
|
|
|
|
- **Pin `IMMICH_VERSION` to a major.** Unset, it resolves to `release`, so a
|
|
routine `docker compose pull` can carry you across a major version while your
|
|
compose file stays behind. Upstream's own `example.env` now sets
|
|
`IMMICH_VERSION=v3` for exactly this reason.
|
|
- **The container media path changed, and it is easy to miss.** Older compose
|
|
files mount `${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload`; since **v1.140.0** it is
|
|
`${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/data`, because `IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION` now defaults to
|
|
`/data`. Run a new image against an old compose file and the server looks for
|
|
your library at an unmounted path — it appears empty, and anything written
|
|
goes into the container and is lost when it is recreated. If you are adopting
|
|
this file over an older one, that mount line is the one to check first.
|
|
- **`DB_DATA_LOCATION` must be local storage.** Not NFS, not SMB, not a
|
|
network share of any kind. Postgres on a network filesystem corrupts, and
|
|
upstream says so in the example env.
|
|
- **Upgrading Postgres extensions is a real migration.** The image here is
|
|
`14-vectorchord0.4.3-pgvectors0.2.0`; moving from an older VectorChord build
|
|
makes Immich alter the database on first boot, which "can take seconds to
|
|
minutes". Back up `DB_DATA_LOCATION` before any version jump, and read
|
|
[the upgrade notes](https://docs.immich.app/install/upgrading/).
|
|
- **`shm_size: 128mb` on the database is load-bearing**, not decoration.
|
|
Postgres uses shared memory for larger queries and Docker's 64 MB default is
|
|
not enough here. Upstream's upgrade guide lists adding it as a required step.
|
|
- **`DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD'` is commented out** in the database environment.
|
|
Uncomment it if the Postgres data directory sits on a spinning disk — it tunes
|
|
the planner's assumptions about random reads. Leave it alone on SSD or NVMe.
|
|
- **Back up `UPLOAD_LOCATION` and `DB_DATA_LOCATION` together.** The files are
|
|
the photos; the database holds every album, face cluster, share and edit.
|
|
Either alone is most of a disaster.
|
|
- **The first import is expensive.** Machine learning runs over the whole
|
|
library once. On a low-power box expect it to saturate the CPU for hours —
|
|
the same caveat as [copyparty](../copyparty/README.md) on an N100, and worth
|
|
scheduling rather than discovering.
|
|
|
|
## Exposing it
|
|
|
|
The mobile apps talk to the same port as the browser, so whatever you put in
|
|
front has to work for both.
|
|
|
|
- [Reverse proxy with Caddy](../docs/reverse-proxy.md) — the normal route.
|
|
Raise the upload body limit or large videos fail on the way in.
|
|
- [Cloudflare Tunnel](../cloudflare-tunnel/) — **the ~100 MB body cap is exactly
|
|
the wrong limit for this.** A phone's 4K video will exceed it. Read
|
|
[the limits](../docs/cloudflare-tunnel.md) first.
|
|
- [Single sign-on with Authentik](../docs/authentik-sso.md) — Immich speaks OIDC
|
|
natively, so use that rather than forward auth, which would break every mobile
|
|
client. Keep a local admin account until the flow is proven.
|
|
|
|
## Links
|
|
|
|
- Install guide: <https://docs.immich.app/install/docker-compose>
|
|
- Release compose file: <https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml>
|
|
- Environment variables: <https://docs.immich.app/install/environment-variables>
|
|
- Upgrading: <https://docs.immich.app/install/upgrading/>
|
|
- Hardware-accelerated ML: <https://docs.immich.app/features/ml-hardware-acceleration>
|
|
- Compose builder: <https://immich.app/docker-compose-builder>
|