Storage How To
This page explains how to create different types of mounts to move or mount different library locations in to Immich Distribution.
Danger
This has the possibility to break your Immich installation, or even your server if you configure your mounts incorrectly. Please be careful, I assume basic Linux administrative knowledge.
Locations Immich can access, and are suitable for images are /var/snap/immich-distribution/common and /root/snap/immich-distribution/common. The first location is used by Immich Distribution already, but feel free to create a subfolder there if you like.
Future name collision
I would choose a folder under /root/snap/immich-distribution/common to reduce the risk for future name collitions. If you like to use /var/snap/immich-distribution/common, pick a unique name.
Examples
Store all images and video on a large external drive
Let's assume that you have a large separate drive attached to your system under /dev/sda2, it's already formatted, but not mounted. Do this to move /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload to that drive.
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /tmp
sudo mv /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload/* /tmp
sudo umount /dev/sda2 /tmp
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload
Please note
Please note that in the example above, the mount-command will not persist cross reboot. You need to configure the mount in /etc/fstab, a systemd .mount-file or any other way relevant of your filesystem.
Store all images and video on a network attached NAS
This is also a common option, follow the external drive guide above. Except, mount your NAS instead of sda2.
Note that network attached drives are usually considerable slower compated to local drives, a possible way to speed things up is to only move /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload/library to the NAS drive, keeping smaller folders like thumbs, encoded videos locally.
How to access external libraries
If possible, mount the external library under the suitable locations /var/snap/immich-distribution/common or /root/snap/immich-distribution/common, for example /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday.
sudo mkdir /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday
sudo mount /dev/sdb6 /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday
Another scenario is that you only like to add a specific folder as a library. Let's assume that your holiday pictures are stored under /data/lunar-holiday. Immich can't access that patch due the snap sandbox. To solve that, we need to bind mount /data/lunar-holiday to a suitable location like /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday.
sudo mkdir /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday
sudo mount --bind /data/lunar-holiday /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday
All done, now add the path /root/snap/immich-distribution/common/lunar-holiday to Immich as an external library.
Please note
Please note that in the examples above, the mount-commands are not persist cross reboots. You need to configure the mount in /etc/fstab, a systemd .mount-file or any other way relevant of your filesystem.
Systemd bind mount example
Let's assume that you like to move /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload/library to another drive, our large drive is located at /data and that we have a folder inside it at /data/library that should contain our library data. This is done with a bind mount, in this example I use systemd mounts.
Create the following mount-file. Note that the filename is based on Where, if you change this patch, this file need to be renamed as well.
[Unit]
Description=Bind Mount Immich Library
[Mount]
What=/data/library
Where=/var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload/library
Type=none
Options=bind
TimeoutSec=5
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Warning
Note that (\x2d) can cause problems, you need to double escapt it as \\x2d alternatively surround it with a single quote ('). One of the following will work:
Figure out a correct filename
There is a built in command called systemd-escape that you can use to generate a correctly escaped string.
systemctl status var-snap-immich\\x2ddistribution-common-upload-library.mount
If you see no error messages, let's start by shuting down Immich services.
sudo mv /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/upload/library/* /data/library
sudo systemctl enable --now var-snap-immich\\x2ddistribution-common-upload-library.mount
Both locations should now contain the same files
All done, start Immich again!