Help migrating Immich library from Docker to LXC

[guilhermearaujo]

Now that there's an Immich script, I was trying to migrate my library from my docker to a container. It's kinda tricky, since there's not an easy way to export/import the data.

Did anyone could make such migration? I made some progress, but it's not working yet, I was hoping I could get some help.

My current setup is via docker, running on a VM and storage is via SMB share from my NAS.
Here's the docker compose (the parts that matter):

services:
  immich-server:
    volumes:
      - immich_library:/usr/src/app/upload
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - photos:/mnt/photos

volumes:
  model-cache:
  photos:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: cifs
      device: //${SMB_HOST}/photos
      o: username=${SMB_USERNAME},password=${SMB_PASSWORD},iocharset=utf8,rw,uid=1000
  immich_library:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: cifs
      device: //${SMB_HOST}/photos/.immich
      o: username=${SMB_USERNAME},password=${SMB_PASSWORD},iocharset=utf8,rw,uid=1000

And this is what I did so far:

First things first, stop the services immich-web and immich-ml.

Second, database: I used one of the daily backup dumps from the docker setup to restore into the LXCc setup. Since the DB passwords are different, I had to first drop everything before restoring:

# drop whatever the inital setup had generated
$ sudo -u postgres dropdb immich
$ sudo -u postgres dropuser immich

# recreate the user
$ sudo -u postgres psql
> CREATE USER immich WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD <same pw from docker>';
> CREATE DATABASE immich WITH OWNER immich ENCODING 'UTF8' TEMPLATE template0;
> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE immich to immich;
> ALTER USER immich WITH SUPERUSER;

Then I restored the database: (reference)

gunzip --stdout /path/to/dump.sql.gz \
| sed "s/SELECT pg_catalog.set_config('search_path', '', false);/SELECT pg_catalog.set_config('search_path', 'public, pg_catalog', true);/g" \
| sudo -u postgres psql --dbname=postgres --username=immich --host=127.0.0.1

Then I updated the database password on /opt/immich/.env to match the old one from docker as well.

Then I replaced the /opt/immich/upload dir with a symlink to my NAS share:

link -s /opt/immich/upload /mnt/photos/.immich/upload

Note: /mnt/photos is where I keep all my orignal pictures, and that .immich` subfolder is where I had the docker setup to keep whatever files Immich generates (thumbnails, metadata, video previews, etc).

I was hoping that that would be all, but when I restarted the services, the web service failed to start. Here's the log:

Starting api worker
Starting microservices worker
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:EventRepository] Initialized websocket server
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:DatabaseRepository] targetLists=1, current=1 for clip_index of 16379 rows
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:DatabaseRepository] targetLists=1, current=1 for face_index of 13507 rows
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:DatabaseRepository] Running migrations, this may take a while
[Nest] 99578  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Api:EventRepository] Initialized websocket server
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:MetadataService] Bootstrapping metadata service
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:MetadataService] Initializing metadata service
[Nest] 99578  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Api:DatabaseRepository] targetLists=1, current=1 for clip_index of 16379 rows
[Nest] 99578  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Api:DatabaseRepository] targetLists=1, current=1 for face_index of 13507 rows
[Nest] 99578  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Api:DatabaseRepository] Running migrations, this may take a while
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:MapRepository] Initializing metadata repository
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:MetadataService] Initialized local reverse geocoder
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:ServerService] Feature Flags: {
  "smartSearch": true,
  "facialRecognition": true,
  "duplicateDetection": true,
  "map": true,
  "reverseGeocoding": true,
  "importFaces": true,
  "sidecar": true,
  "search": true,
  "trash": true,
  "oauth": true,
  "oauthAutoLaunch": false,
  "passwordLogin": true,
  "configFile": false,
  "email": false
}
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM     LOG [Microservices:StorageService] Verifying system mount folder checks, current state: {"mountFiles":true,"mountChecks":{"thumbs":true,"upload":true,"backups":true,"library":true,"profile":true,"encoded-video":true}}
[Nest] 99571  - 06/22/2025, 1:16:46 PM   ERROR [Microservices:StorageService] Failed to read /opt/immich/upload/encoded-video/.immich: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/opt/immich/upload/encoded-video/.immich'
microservices worker error: Error: Failed to read "<UPLOAD_LOCATION>/encoded-video/.immich - Please see https://immich.app/docs/administration/system-integrity#folder-checks for more information.", stack: Error: Failed to read "<UPLOAD_LOCATION>/encoded-video/.immich - Please see https://immich.app/docs/administration/system-integrity#folder-checks for more information."
    at StorageService.verifyReadAccess (/opt/immich/app/dist/services/storage.service.js:84:19)
    at async /opt/immich/app/dist/services/storage.service.js:38:21
    at async /opt/immich/app/dist/repositories/database.repository.js:385:27
    at async /opt/immich/app/node_modules/kysely/dist/cjs/kysely.js:535:20
    at async DefaultConnectionProvider.provideConnection (/opt/immich/app/node_modules/kysely/dist/cjs/driver/default-connection-provider.js:12:20)
    at async /opt/immich/app/dist/repositories/database.repository.js:382:13
microservices worker exited with code 1

What am I missing? Did anyone get any further than this?

[vhsdream]

Hello @guilhermearaujo - did you read the Guide? While not a 1:1 of what you're trying to accomplish, there is information in that discussion that might help you. Specifically the 'Advanced Settings' portion since it seems you are splitting up the locations of the photo content vs the metadata, like I have.

What is the current value of your IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION in /opt/immich/.env?

If I'm understanding your setup, your actual photos are in /mnt/photos and all other metadata (thumbnails, encoded video, profile, backups, the deprecated library folder) is in /mnt/photos/.immich. Is that correct?

If that is the case, I would try setting IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION to /mnt/photos/.immich. Then make a symlink from /mnt/photos/.immich/upload to /mnt/photos. Then you need to make 2 more symlinks and restore permissions:

ln -s /mnt/photos/.immich/upload /opt/immich/app/upload
ln -s /mnt/photos/.immich/upload /opt/immich/app/machine-learning/upload
chown -R immich:immich /opt/immich

Doing it this way should have Immich look for encoded-video, thumbnails, uploads etc in /mnt/photos/.immich and with the symlink for your images Immich should be redirected to /mnt/photos.

Please give this a try and let me know how it goes.

[guilhermearaujo]

@vhsdream I did see that guide, but it did not seem to fit my needs.

IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION is still set to the default (/opt/immich/upload). However, as I said, I replaced that path with a symlink to my NAS, at /mnt/photos/.immich, because I wanted to offload the heavy stuff (thumbnails, encoded videos, etc) to the NAS, and leave only the light stuff (everything else within /opt/immich) in the LXC/host drive.

I'll try your suggestion and then I get back

[vhsdream]

Oh @guilhermearaujo then I don't quite follow - you want to do the reverse of what I've done? Store thumbnails, encoded videos, profile info, etc on your NAS? I would suggest against it; I feel like it makes more sense to have thumbnails and videos (if there are not too many or too large) on the LXC disk, since that is going to be faster and (at least for me) makes scrolling through my library very responsive since thumbnails load super-fast.

But you do you - let me know how it goes.

[guilhermearaujo]

I kinda do need to do that, because I have a single server, and its local storage is not large enough :(