Fellow self hosting friends, I screwed up. Not only have I deleted Immich’s PostgreSQL folder but I also didn’t have backups (of the database, of the photos I do).

I’ve tried to recover the deleted folder but there’s not much left even with proper tools. I’ve checked and the photos are still there, so my question is: Is there a way for immich to rebuild the database with the photos there? Should I start from scratch and re-upload?

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    73·
    6 days ago

    This does not help you but it makes me think of this:

    I understand why it makes technical sense to do so but immich storing things in a database in general is more nuisance then practical.

    We want those fotos accessible in our own file system where we have full control of what is what.

    Immich job is to put the pictures from a phone to the server and also to display all pictures within a certain directory.

    It does a good job at both. Having your own file structure is not a problem and it seem to even know and adapt if pics get moved around.

    But we have to manually move the photos out of its own structure into our own every time we do a big upload.

    Maybe i can set something up with syslinks so it all appears centralized as a big “upload” folder to be sorted.

    • Infernal_pizza@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      When you first set it up there is an option to set a custom filesystem, I selected that and then chose the default which just sorts by year and day

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        I am aware and actually use this but it appears too restrictive for our needs.

        The structure we were already using cannot be recreated. Honestly i could live with the default. But my partner who is less into computers likes to make their own backups on external hard drives and uses shared network drives rather then the immich web viewer.

          • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            I am, that works really well actually and it even knows when the same file was moved.

            But to add new files to that external library, which is in fact the only main library. We need to dig in immich file structure which at the very least enforces different directories per individual user and also uses those to store some forms of metadata.

            We tried sharing a user in the beginning but the app did not seem to like that.

            Now its not the biggest deal, just an annoyance. the fix i am currently thinking is to move the immich directory to somewhere hidden and us systemlinks to get all uploads centralized under a single directory for further processing.