In the .env file, set the Postgres and library location to a path somewhere on your C drive and let me know if that fixes the issue.

@@ThomasWildeTech Thank you very much! That seems to do the trick. I was trying to save my photos to a DrivePool path on the server, but that must have been causing a permission issue. At least I know the program is running now. Do you have any suggestions on how I might be able to access the path on my DrivePool folder?

Nice! We're narrowing it down then. Can you tell me the path you are using for your DrivePool folder in the .env file? Like is it mapped to a Drive letter, or are you using a path like `\\<ip-address>\<smb-share-name>`. Does the DrivePool require a username and password to map it as a drive? You can take a look at the logs in docker desktop as well and it may indicate if there's a permission error or if it's running into some kind of issue writing to the path.

@@ThomasWildeTech The path is mapped to a drive letter "I:\ServerFolders\ImmichPhotos" and "I:\ServerFolders\ImmichPostgres". I'm not aware of the DrivePool requiring a username and password. In the logs I only see the following errors "ERROR [TypeOrmModule] Unable to connect to the database. Retrying (1)" and "ERROR [ExceptionHandler] connect ECONNREFUSED 172.18.0.4:5432"

That's exactly right. For it to sync outside of the network, the best solutions are either to connect to a Wireguard VPN in another container occasionally (this effectively puts your phone into your home network wherever you may be, see my Wireguard tutorial), or use mesh VPN service like TailScale, which basically creates a VPN just for Immich so that it can always sync wherever you are.

I'm not sure I can explain the missing files. You should have a user folder within home. Once the container is running, deleting the compose file would not corrupt the running container. But if you took the container down you would not be able to bring it back up.

Thanks for dropping me a comment and I appreciate the ip address callout!

@ThomasWildeTech no problem bro

For CloudFlare tunnel you need to own a domain, it works by routing a public URL to your service (Immich). There are other ways to access your Immich server without a domain, including a VPN or mesh VPN service like TailScale. I will post a video on how to use TailScale with Immich after the holidays.

@ThomasWildeTech I just decided to make my own VPN using wiregaurd as it was free

This video will get you set up on the local network. For remote access, I recommend setting up CloudFlare in another docker container (my most recent video), or set up TailScale, which will be one of my next videos.

Can you post your docker compose file in another reply?

For sure, WSL is still using a lightweight VM though, but it will use fewer resources than docker desktop.

For sure, just follow the fedora instructions for setting up docker and the rest should be about the same

This sounds like it might be more of a use case for using TailScale which is a mesh VPN. You can then add a node into any device within your private network to add it to your VPN mesh.

You talking about Docker Desktop?

@ThomasWildeTech I mean a simple .exe installer that will put it on Windows. Going from a gui to a command line is like leaping back in time.

@reddeviluk Oh I see. That would be a nice thing for Windows. There is a one click install from the Ubuntu snap store. I'll have to see if that would work with WSL.

@ThomasWildeTech I'm going to follow your guide tomorrow (if family permits)..... But the thought of simply clicking an install file and it just working, as all Windows installers do..... Paradise. If they want it to be a financially viable piece of software, I don't know why a better installer isn't a priority, popular opinion or not, Windows is the most popular OS out there, which means more contributing customers. Anyway, soon be Christmas here, have a great time.

The challenging thing is that this is a full stack application that would typically be deployed on a server, and containerizing it as they've done really is the easiest means of deployment. Deploying an app as an exe makes sense for installing desktop applications of running a particular service, like MySQL server for example, but I think it would be logistically difficult to pull of an exe such that you could still have control of a containerized Postgres database, microservices, and web server. Another gui approach could be to try installing something like CasaOS on WSL that has an app store which you can simply click to install Immich. This works just fine on a Linux distribution but I haven't tried on WSL.

Do you mean that you are running Immich in windows through docker desktop? I'll have to give that a try, I use the CLI on windows to upload albums to my Immich instance running on Ubuntu.

@ThomasWildeTech my Immich instance is running on my Ubuntu server, I tried to upload using my windows machine with NPM. But I think I'm going to ditch the upload for the external library option which seem more practical

Hey, thanks for the idea. For your use case to have https on the local network, do you share your network with roommates or in general have a concern for sensitive info transferred over the local network or MITM attacks? I also just want to make sure it's clear that this video is enabling https for external access to your Immich server, but like you said, the service is still available with an http connection on the local network. I would look into running a Caddy webserver which greatly simplifies fetching a certificate, even for local use without a domain (self signed). I'll definitely look into making a video about this. Are you wanting to use a domain on the local network too, i.e. run a local DNS server, or is "ip-address:port" sufficient?

Yeah it depends on a couple of things like what kind of uptime you want and if you have enough memory to have this up in the background all the time or just to allow the app to sync now and again. You can run TailScale on both your computer and phone to make sure you're always connected to the app on the go, and you can even run CloudFlared in docker desktop to have your site accessible via a domain. So I think it's a fine approach to start and just see where it takes you.

There are no limitations to file transfer through Wireguard that I am aware of.

Hard to get hacked when you aren't exposing anything

Thanks! I really appreciate it. I don't personally have a QNAP so I can only spitball. There should be an application called container station on your qnap I believe. What's that like? Is there a place in there that you can import docker-compose.yml files? I'm not sure if it supports docker compose or not but I'm fairly certain it supports docker containers. What you might do is look into installing Portainer? I like Portainer a lot and you can set up Immich directly in Portainer. Maybe I'll make a tutorial on that!

@@ThomasWildeTech That would be great! An install video for Portainer and Immich. QNAP does have Container Station and Docker can be installed there as well. I’ve used it before. Not the most intuitive, however not that bad. Just so bizarre that no one has made a video for installing Immich on a QNAP! Not even the Immich folks! Merry Christmas!

I can't say for sure because I don't own a Synology, but this looks like a good guide (mariushosting.com/synology-how-to-update-containers-in-container-manager/). Also, depending on how much you enjoy container manager, you could also consider installing Portainer, then use Portainer to install Immich as Portainer is good with working with docker compose files.

I use Immich with TailScale as my go to. I'm going to do a video soon on my current set up with both TailScale and ClourdFlare tunnel. Awesome combo!

Please sooner than later, 😅 i literally cant get immich to work with tailscale

im running Immich with tailscale for over 2 months now working flawlessly

It's a thing of beauty. I have TailScale on both my phone and my wife's phone with the same Immich account so we can see each other's photos immediately in the same Immich account

@@ThomasWildeTech can you give any insight as to how you got it to work ?

Hi Tobias, I'd love to improve and be as helpful as I can. I did try to be concise and swift in this video to keep it short. What would you like to have seen be explained in more detail? What steps did you feel were missing? What are you left wondering about? I appreciate the feedback!

Yep! I just did some minimal testing it and found my photos with clear keywords.

@@ThomasWildeTech I just went to their website and entered the demo account, i tried looking for words that appeared in their photos but unfortunately they didn't show up, not sure why :(. Are you sure it worked in your computer? I really need this feature because often i take screenshots or take pictures of a receipt for example and need to look it up later

I did a little more digging. It does not explicitly have OCR yet, however it can "pick up on text", which likely may not be good enough for you. The developers did recently say that OCR is in the works. Immich does have really good object detection so for your situation, you can just search "receipts". This did a good job of finding a bunch of receipts I have taken pictures of. I'm not sure if that would be sufficient for your use case.

@@ThomasWildeTech It's hard because i have photos going more than 10 years back in google photos. Sometimes i need to find something based on a word that was written somewhere which i vaguely remember. Once they figure that out i will probably switch. The other thing is the installation seems complicated, i wish it would be a service i can just pay for while keeping the privacy of my photos from google. I don't mind paying for the service actually, just want to de-google myself.

@@ThomasWildeTech by the way i just went to their website demo account again. I searched for "dog" and it showed me all kinds of pictures of spiders, fish, goats, etc. Not sure recognition is as good as google photos yet (which is impressively accurate), but glad somewhere is working on it and have something to change to when it's ready

Thanks! Yeah I generally try to scrub the video of that.

Hi, you can change the storage location by changing the library path in the .env file. Let me know if this resolves your issue.

Thank you!

Hi there, thanks for the question! 1. What would you recommend to do a full copy of Immich server (database) & Files (images, videos)? I want to keep this in an external SSD If you want to copy your assets library and the location where your database is persisted you have a couple of options. - FreeFileSync is a great tool for manually and scheduling the syncing of an internal drive to an external drive. It could then determine what assets have not yet synced over to the external drive, or what assets have since been deleted and will respectively delete those from the external drive. I suppose you could do this with the persisted database location as well. Some other options to consider: if you are going to continue to use your PC for this purpose, and if you still have additional SATA ports and bays, you could consider adding another drive to your PC, going into BIOS, and setting up two drives in a RAID array, such that you have two drives that are a mirror of each other. 2. Do you recommend getting Immich into an SSD to make it faster? I would recommend that your Immich database is persisted onto an SSD, assuming your OS is also operating on an SSD. Your assets library is fine on an HDD for most purposes. Immich should still operate fast because it leverages smaller thumbnail files, and for me, I don't care too much about how long it takes to sync my phone because it's always doing it in the background. 3. What hardware would you buy to have it online for Immich purpose? Maybe I could even use it for other self-hosting. There's probably a lot of opinions on this matter. I like to say use what you have! Unless you really need your Home PC as a daily driver with Windows running on it, I would slap a Linux distribution on it, bump up your RAM, add a couple of harddrives on it. Now you have a server that can run Immich and many other self hosted apps, you have a network drive that can be mapped by other computers on your network, etc, etc. This would be a good option if you were going to say get a laptop or something that would be your daily windows driver. This is essentially what I need. Otherwise I'd love to hear what solution or products you find to be best for you!

@ThomasWildeTech wow nice for the detailed question. I only have my home PC with no other options. I also use it for gaming so I cannot run docker containers and use it... This is why I was thinking of another device but I would need to purchase it. Maybe a Mini PC is worth? I do not know if it makes sense to have Immich if it cannot be running 24/7. Right now I only open it sometimes for syncing. Thanks so much and keep up with the nice videos! :)

@JavierQu A mini PC seems like a great option. Even something like a dell optiplex ($100 to $200) seems decently popular on reddit and people are wise to note the number sata/m.2 ports and expandable memory. You could build a PC or check what's on sale at refurbished outlets. Let me know what you come up with!

Also you made another folder called Immich inside of C: users and saved the library into that folder off camera, do we need to do that as well?

Also the ip you used is not the ip that it said on ipconfig when you looked it up on the machine. what IP did you use?

When you say it's not working, what exactly is happening?

I set the library and postgres location to a location on my C: drive, because I wanted these to be persisted on my drive.

Can you point to the time stamps? On the mobile device, I should have used the IP address of my windows machine.

Thanks!

You can set the storage location in the .env file.

Yeah, you can map whatever port you want on the docker compose file. Then, just as you mentioned, you'll need to make sure that is the port you are forwarding to. You can also expose a different port on the router than the port that it is forwarding to.

Thanks!

Are you wanting to run the VPN server on Windows or you have a Windows device that you want to connect to the VPN. Of the latter there is a Wireguard app that runs on Windows as well and you can import a config file. I can do a video on this as well if that'd be useful.

@@ThomasWildeTechyes please

You're getting a 404 error when you try to go to the base site localhost:8000? Does it seem that the app is running fine from the console?

@@ThomasWildeTech In local host it’s working fine but when i am trying to deploy / publish in github, getting error 404. Is it possible you can share your LinkedIn profile so that we can connect?

Same thing happened to me, did you figure it out?

@fernandofontes9801 yeah , it was code error , dont put that line after Docker. It will sork i think

Sorry for the late reply, did you get it working? Check out the logs in docker Desktop as well.

I had a similar issue and had to log out of Docker for it to install.

In docker Desktop, take a look at the settings, go to resources -> WSL integration and try enabling that if it wasn't enabled already. Let me know if you get it resolved!

@@ThomasWildeTech Thanks for the quick response, This is what the page says for me and the "Enable integration with my default WSL distro" is ticked already Resources WSL integration Configure which WSL 2 distros you want to access Docker from. Enable integration with my default WSL distro You don't have any WSL 2 distros installed. Please convert a WSL 1 distro to WSL 2, or install a new distro and it will appear here.

Just to note, i have already tried uninstalling docker desktop and re-installing it to check it wasn't an installation issues.

@@krammss I'm having this same problem. Did you ever find a solution?

@@dragons597 sadly no, I just booted up a debian vm instead on hyperv. Do let me know if you find the solution.

I will check it out! Thanks for the suggestion.