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Immich is a pretty cool open source, web-based photo library management software designed to easily be self-hosted. 100% of that appeals to me, but unfortunately their recommended installation process uses Docker Compose.

I'm a curmudgeon and I don't like Docker. I prefer Podman because I don't want my containers running as root and I don't like Docker's daemon. Yes, I know it's technically possible to do no-root Docker, but it's slightly off the beaten path and I'd rather just use Podman, which was designed for non-root execution from the get-go.

Podman can do pretty much everything Docker does, often with the same interface, but it doesn't have built-in support for Docker Compose files. Instead, podman compose shells out to an external “provider”, either docker-compose itself, or podman-compose, a big complicated python-based reimplementation.

I wanted to avoid all of that, so I just configured Immich to run in a podman pod.

Here's my shell script for creating the pod:

#!/bin/bash

systemctl --user disable pod-immich
systemctl --user stop pod-immich

cd /home/someuser/.config/systemd/user
rm pod-immich.service
rm container-redis.service
rm container-immich-server.service
rm container-immich-machine-learning.service
rm container-database.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload

podman pod stop immich
podman pod rm immich
podman pod create --name immich --publish 0.0.0.0:2283:2283

podman run --replace --detach --pod immich --name immich-machine-learning --env-file /home/someuser/immich/.env --volume /home/someuser/immich/model-cache:/cache --memory-reservation=2g --memory=4g ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:release

# docker.io/redis:6.2-alpine@sha256:148bb5411c184abd288d9aaed139c98123eeb8824c5d3fce03cf721db58066d8
podman run --replace --detach --pod immich --memory-reservation=2g --memory=4g --name redis docker.io/redis@sha256:148bb5411c184abd288d9aaed139c98123eeb8824c5d3fce03cf721db58066d8

# docker.io/tensorchord/pgvecto-rs:pg14-v0.2.0@sha256:739cdd626151ff1f796dc95a6591b55a714f341c737e27f045019ceabf8e8c52
podman run --replace --detach --pod immich --name database --env-file /home/someuser/immich/.env --volume /home/someuser/immich/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data --memory-reservation=2g --memory=4g docker.io/tensorchord/pgvecto-rs@sha256:739cdd626151ff1f796dc95a6591b55a714f341c737e27f045019ceabf8e8c52  postgres -c shared_preload_libraries=vectors.so -c 'search_path="$$user", public, vectors' -c logging_collector=on -c max_wal_size=2GB -c shared_buffers=512MB -c wal_compression=on

podman run --replace --detach --pod immich --name immich-server --env-file /home/someuser/immich/.env --volume /home/someuser/immich/upload:/usr/src/app/upload --volume /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro --volume /home/someuser/Pictures:/mnt/media/megapictures:ro --requires redis,database,immich-machine-learning --memory-reservation=2g --memory=4g ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:release

podman generate systemd --files --name --name immich
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable pod-immich.service

This creates a pod, then creates four containers within it for the services that Immich requires. It also registers it with systemd.

Some notes:

• I run this whenever Immich cuts a new release. I may have to edit the container digests to reflect the new version. You can find those in the docker compose file of the Immich release. This script corresponds to Immich v1.131.3.
• You'll need to customize the paths and the .env file to suit your needs.
• It's likely that this will break at some point as Immich updates their docker compose file. For example if they add another container, I'll have to update this.
• I put the whole thing behind a reverse proxy.
• I don't remember what else I had to do. Good luck.
• I'm using Ubuntu 22.04.

You may ask: “Isn't this essentially just re-creating the docker compose file in a script that makes a Podman pod?” Yep.