Ben Warai Otoko

Migrating 5,700 Photos to Immich (And Fixing Every Possible Issue)

5 min read

I had Immich running. Then I lost the config files. The photos were still there — 5,700 of them, 62GB, sitting on a NAS — but the setup was gone.

New Immich install: connection refused. Classic.

Here’s everything I broke and how I fixed it.

The Connection Refused Rabbit Hole

Problem 1: Missing Hostname Variables

docker compose up ran fine. The web interface didn’t load. Logs said:

docker compose logs immich-server
# Error: getaddrinfo EAI_AGAIN database

The containers were looking for a host called database. My PostgreSQL container was named immich_postgres.

Fix: Two lines in .env:

DB_HOSTNAME=immich_postgres
REDIS_HOSTNAME=immich_redis

Problem 2: Wrong Port (v1.x Habits Die Hard)

Still getting connection resets. Turns out I was using the old port config:

ports:
  - 2283:3001  # Outdated. Will break silently.

Immich v2.4+ changed the internal port from 3001 to 2283:

ports:
  - 2283:2283  # This is what you want.

If you’re coming from an older install, this one will absolutely catch you.

Problem 3: Volume Paths Changed Too

Same version, same surprise:

# Before
volumes:
  - /srv/immich:/usr/src/app/upload
 
# After (v2.4+)
volumes:
  - /srv/immich:/data

The cool part is that once you’ve fixed all three of these, everything works. The frustrating part is finding all three.

The Working Config

Here’s the full docker-compose.yml that actually runs:

name: immich
services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:release
    command: ["start.sh", "immich"]
    volumes:
      - /srv/immich:/data
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    env_file:
      - .env
    depends_on:
      - immich_redis
      - immich_postgres
    ports:
      - 2283:2283
    restart: always
    networks:
      - immich_network
 
  immich-microservices:
    container_name: immich_microservices
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:release
    command: ["start.sh", "microservices"]
    volumes:
      - /srv/immich:/data:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    env_file:
      - .env
    depends_on:
      - immich_redis
      - immich_postgres
    restart: always
    networks:
      - immich_network
 
  immich-machine-learning:
    container_name: immich_machine_learning
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:release
    volumes:
      - /srv/immich/ml-cache:/cache
    env_file:
      - .env
    restart: always
    networks:
      - immich_network
 
  immich_postgres:
    container_name: immich_postgres
    image: tensorchord/pgvecto-rs:pg14-v0.2.0
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: YourSecurePassword
      POSTGRES_USER: postgres
      POSTGRES_DB: immich
    volumes:
      - /srv/immich/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    restart: always
    networks:
      - immich_network
 
  immich_redis:
    container_name: immich_redis
    image: redis:7.2
    restart: always
    networks:
      - immich_network
 
networks:
  immich_network:
    driver: bridge

And the .env:

UPLOAD_LOCATION=/usr/src/app/upload
DB_HOSTNAME=immich_postgres
DB_PASSWORD=YourSecurePassword
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich
REDIS_HOSTNAME=immich_redis
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=YourSecurePassword
POSTGRES_DB=immich
POSTGRES_USER=postgres
TZ=Europe/Paris
IMMICH_VERSION=release

Now For the Fun Part: 62GB of Photos

Immich is running. Time to get 5,742 photos back into it.

Step 1: Mount the NAS

Photos were on a Synology NAS over NFS:

showmount -e NAS-IP
 
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/old-immich
sudo mount -t nfs4 NAS-IP:/volume1/FOLDER /mnt/old-immich

Step 2: Know What You’re Dealing With

find /mnt/old-immich/IMMICH/library -type f \
  \( -iname "*.jpg" -o -iname "*.jpeg" -o -iname "*.png" \
     -o -iname "*.heic" -o -iname "*.mp4" -o -iname "*.mov" \) | wc -l
# 5,742 files
 
du -sh /mnt/old-immich/IMMICH/library
# 62GB

Breakdown: 2,658 JPG, 1,476 HEIC, 1,186 MOV, 405 MP4, 15 PNG.

Step 3: Don’t Just Copy Files (I Did, It Doesn’t Work)

First instinct: rsync everything into /srv/immich/library. Reasonable, right?

sudo rsync -avh --progress /mnt/old-immich/IMMICH/library/ /srv/immich/library/

Problem: Immich ignores files dropped directly into the library folder. It only manages content it imported itself. The /data/library path is for External Libraries — a different thing entirely.

You need the Immich CLI.

Step 4: Use the CLI Properly

The CLI handles everything the right way: hashes files, creates database entries, generates thumbnails, extracts EXIF.

Get an API key: Open http://127.0.0.1:2283 → Account Settings → API Keys → New API Key.

Authenticate:

docker exec immich_server immich login-key http://localhost:2283 YOUR_API_KEY

The problem with uploading 5,700+ files at once: it hung on “Crawling for assets…” over NFS and never moved.

The fix: upload folder by folder.

Testing a single folder:

docker exec immich_server immich upload --recursive /data/library/admin/2024/2024-09-25
# Successfully uploaded 9 new assets (92.1 MB)

That worked fine.

Step 5: Script the Bulk Upload

532 folders to process. Time for a loop:

#!/bin/bash
 
LOG_FILE="/tmp/immich-upload-progress.log"
 
echo "=== Starting Immich Upload ===" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
echo "$(date): Starting" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
 
docker exec immich_server find /data/library/admin -type d -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 | while read -r folder; do
    echo "$(date): Uploading $folder" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
    docker exec immich_server immich upload --recursive "$folder" 2>&1 | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
 
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "$(date): ✅ Success for $folder" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
    else
        echo "$(date): ❌ Failed for $folder" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
    fi
done
 
echo "$(date): Upload completed!" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"

Run it in the background and watch the log:

chmod +x /tmp/immich-bulk-upload.sh
nohup /tmp/immich-bulk-upload.sh > /tmp/immich-upload.log 2>&1 &
 
tail -f /tmp/immich-upload-progress.log

About 1.5-2 hours for 532 folders. Go touch grass.

Cleanup

Once you’ve verified everything landed correctly:

sudo rm -rf /srv/immich/library/admin/   # Recovers 62GB
sudo umount /mnt/old-immich
sudo rmdir /mnt/old-immich

Total recovered: ~124GB (original + the temporary copy).

Quick Reference

# Container status
docker compose ps
 
# Server logs
docker compose logs immich-server --tail 50
 
# Test API
curl http://127.0.0.1:2283/api/server/ping
# Expected: {"res":"pong"}
 
# Check version
curl http://127.0.0.1:2283/api/server/version
 
# Monitor upload
tail -f /tmp/immich-upload-progress.log
 
# Disk usage
df -h /srv/immich

What I Learned

  1. Check the changelog when upgrading — ports and paths changed between v1.x and v2.4. Old configs will break quietly.
  2. Environment variables matter — Missing DB_HOSTNAME is an easy one to miss, a painful one to debug.
  3. Use the CLI for imports — Don’t drop files directly. The CLI handles metadata, hashing, and deduplication properly.
  4. Batch large uploads — 5,700 files over NFS at once will time out. Folder by folder is the move.
  5. Verify before deleting — Obvious in hindsight, painful if skipped.

Resources

Immich is solid once you get past the version migration landmines. The folder-by-folder upload approach is what made the difference. If you’re migrating a large library, don’t try to do it all at once.

Immich Version: v2.4.1 — Platform: Docker Compose on Ubuntu Server

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