Immich photo sharing software

Instructions

Create LXC (inprivilaged)⌗

Since I’d like to use some fairly recent features of Podman, we MUST start with debian 12 (Bookworm) or 13 (Trixie) when it is released. In addition, I added asecond mount point at /var/immich for data, if you want to keep the data on a separate storage location. It’s up to you. The container can be unprivilaged, but it needs nesting and FUSE enabled.

#Replace bookworm with trixie in sources.list
#Not needed if you are actually using Trixie (when it releases)
sed -i 's/bookworm/trixie/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
#Update and dist-upgrade to Trixe
#Answer yes to all prompts
apt update && apt dist-upgrade -y

Install and configure Postgres⌗ 

#Specify version 15 even though it's the current
#Since Immich wants version 14 or 15
apt install postgresql-15 sudo -y
sudo -u postgres psql

Now, in the Postgres shell, run these commands (make sure you set your own db password!):

create database immich;
create user imuser with encrypted password 'imuser';
grant all privileges on schema public to imuser;
exit

Done with Postgres!

Install and configure Redis⌗

Redis is super easy thanks to apt packages taking care of us. Default config binds to localhost only and that’s great for us.

apt install redis -y

Install Immich⌗

Now we actually have to install Podman since Immich doesn’t want to distribute their software any other way. Don’t worry, we’re going to convert this into a systemd unit so we can manage it sanely. Make sure you update the password with the one you used earlier!

#Install Podman
apt install podman -y
#Create quadlet directory
mkdir -p /etc/containers/systemd
#Create Immich directories
mkdir -p /var/immich/{config,photos}
#Immich will run as uid/gid 1000 so own those dirs to it
chown 1000:1000 -R /var/immich

Now we’re going to create the podman contaner file, which uses systemd syntax and lets us manage the container with systemd. Edit /etc/containers/systemd/immich.container:

[Unit]
Description=Immich photo manager
After=network-online.target

[Container]
#Basic setup
ContainerName=immich
Network=host
#Environment variables
Environment=TZ=Etc/UTC
Environment=DB_HOSTNAME=::1
Environment=DB_USERNAME=imuser
#Make sure you update this!
Environment=DB_PASSWORD=imuser
Environment=DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich
Environment=REDIS_HOSTNAME=::1
Environment=DISABLE_MACHINE_LEARNING=false
Environment=ENABLE_TYPESENSE=false
#Create photos under user 1000/1000
Environment=PUID=1000
Environment=PGID=1000
#Mounted volumes
Volume=/var/immich/config:/config
Volume=/var/immich/photos:/photos
#Optional: Put the machine-learning models somewhere else if you want
#Volume=/var/immich/ml:/config/machine-learning
#The image itself
Image=ghcr.io/imagegenius/immich:latest

[Service]
#Give it a 15 minutes to start
#Since any image pulls will take a long time
TimeoutStartSec=900

[Install]
# Start on boot
WantedBy=multi-user.target default.target

And finally we can start the new service:

systemctl daemon-reload
#The first time will take awhile since it pulls the image
systemctl start immich

And view logs with journalctl -xeu immich