Ohboy. Tonight I:

  • installed a cool docker monitoring app called dockge
  • started moving docker compose files from random other folders into one centralized place (/opt/dockers if that matters)
  • got to immich, brought the container down
  • moved the docker-compose.yml into my new folder
  • docker compose up -d
  • saw errors saying it didn’t have a DB name to work with, so it created a new database

panik

  • docker compose down
  • copy old .env file from the old directory into the new folder!
  • hold breath
  • docker compose up -d

Welcome to Immich! Let’s get started…

Awwwwww, crud.

Anything I can do at this point?

No immich DB backup but I do have the images themselves.

EDIT: Thanks to u/atzanteol I figured out that changing the folder name caused this too. I changed the docker folder’s name back to the original name and got my DB back! yay

  • Lem453English
    17·
    23 days ago

    Is it not in the immich_pgdata or immich-app_pgdata folder?

    The volumes themselves should be stored at /var/lib/docker/volumes

    For future reference, doing operations like this without backing up first is insane.

    Get borgmatic installed to take automatic backups and send them to a backup like another server or borgbase.

    • perishthethought@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      16·
      23 days ago

      OMG! Yes!!!

      I thought it would be good to make the folder name shorter when I moved it, so it went from immich-app before, to immich.

      I just now brought it down, renamed the folder, brought it back up and my DB is back again!

      Thank you so much. <3

      I weill check out borgmatic too. Cheers,

      • Lem453English
        11·
        23 days ago

        Awesome, take this close call as a kind reminder from the universe to backup!

        Borg will allow incremental backups from any number of local folders to any number of remote locations. Borgmatic is a wrapper for it that also includes automated incremental borg backups.

        I have a second server that runs this container: nold360/borgserver

        Which works as a borg repository.

        I also buy storage in borgbase and so every hour and incremental setup goes to both.

        The other day I blew away a config folder by accident and restored it with no sweat in 2 mins.

      • RentlarEnglish
        5·
        23 days ago

        Woohoo! Always great to read a success story!

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        23 days ago

        Glad you sorted it!

        It’s very unexpected behavior for docker compose IMHO. When you say the volume is named “foo” it creates a volume named “directory_foo”. Same with all the container names.

        You do have some control over that by setting a project name. So you could re-use your old volumes with the new directory name.

        Or if you want to migrate from an old volume to a new one you can create a container with both volumes mounted and copy your data over by doing something like this:

        docker run -it --rm -v old_volume:/old:ro -v new_volume:/new ubuntu:latest 
$ apt update && apt install -y rsync
$ rsync -rav --progress --delete /old/ /new/ # be *very* sure to have the order of these two correct!
$ exit

        For the most part applications won’t “delete and re-create” a data source if it finds one. The logic is “did I find a DB, if so then use it, else create a fresh one.”

        • Lem453English
          1·
          22 days ago

          This is one of the reasons I never use docker volumes. I bind mount a local folder from the host or mount and NFS share from somewhere else. Has been much more reliable because the exact location of the storage is defined clearly in the compose file.

          Borg backup is set to backup the parent folder of all the docker storage folders so when I add a new one the backup solution just picks it up automatically at the next hourly run.

          • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            22 days ago

            I have a similar distrust of volumes. I’ve been warming up to them lately but I still like the simple transparency of bind mounts. It’s also very easy to backup a bind mount since it’s just sitting there on the FS.