Storage management in Immich?

[perelin]

So, after some exchanges in the Immich Discord I managed to switch my existing Immich Photo Library to an external volume on a Hetzner Storage Box by copying the files (./upload/*) and setting the IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION to a mounted storage volume in /media/
Immich started up again and displayed all my photos.
BUT: it seems I cant upload new photos Not sure why, the /media/ mounted volume (Hetzner Storage Box) seems to have full permissions. Here is the Immich log when trying to upload a file:

May 20 09:21:41 [Nest] 61 - 05/20/2025, 7:21:41 AM ERROR [Api:ErrorInterceptor~7wmg4ktf] Unknown error: Error: EPERM: operation not permitted, utime '/media/FSN1-BX1401/photos/immich/upload/bf2f33b8-b8b4-4f5d-9619-62e462afa3fd/a7/d2/a7d2dc05-0b07-4aca-977f-193026f26430.HEIC'
May 20 09:21:41 Error: EPERM: operation not permitted, utime '/media/FSN1-BX1401/photos/immich/upload/bf2f33b8-b8b4-4f5d-9619-62e462afa3fd/a7/d2/a7d2dc05-0b07-4aca-977f-193026f26430.HEIC'
May 20 09:21:41 at async Object.utimes (node:internal/fs/promises:1127:10)
May 20 09:21:41 at async AssetMediaService.create (/usr/src/app/dist/services/asset-media.service.js:293:9)
May 20 09:21:41 at async AssetMediaService.uploadAsset (/usr/src/app/dist/services/asset-media.service.js27)
May 20 09:21:41 at async AssetMediaController.uploadAsset (/usr/src/app/dist/controllers/asset-media.controller.js:40:29)

Any ideas how to debug this?

[nebulon]

Immich runs as the cloudron user within the container. If you open a webterminal into the app, can you check if that user has write permissions to the /media/... volume?

[perelin]

Yes, tried that - basic permissions look good. It seem to be an issue with Immich trying to use utime to change timestamps on the mounted share which seem to be an issue somehow for the cloudron user. Some testing on my box shows:

Creating a testfile (touch .test) on the mounted share and then trying to change the timestamp

• works for root (-> touch -t 202501010000 .test)
• does not work for cloudron (-> sudo -u cloudron touch -t 202501010000 .test)

Not sure how to continue.

[nebulon]

For a start, how did you mount the storage box? both SSHFS and CIFS are quite particular about users and permissions. One reason why we don't support moving the main app directory onto such mount points...

[perelin]

I mounted it with the Cloudron build in mount option in the UI. Are there other options? I guess editing fstab by hand will be overwritten at some point

Here is the output of the mountcommand from the console.

root@81deeb68-0628-45ff-bf4c-0e9e294e7935:/media/FSN1-BX1401# mount | grep FSN1-BX1401
//u452885.your-storagebox.de/backup on /media/FSN1-BX1401 type cifs (rw,relatime,vers=3.1.1,cache=strict,username=u452885,uid=808,forceuid,gid=808,forcegid,addr=2a01:04f8:2b03:0981:0000:0000:0000:0002,file_mode=0666,dir_mode=0777,iocharset=utf8,seal,soft,nounix,serverino,mapposix,rsize=4194304,wsize=4194304,bsize=1048576,retrans=1,echo_interval=60,actimeo=1,closetimeo=1)

[nebulon]

right, so the issue is, CIFS with hetzner only knows one uid which is set there in the mount option. This means there are no real user IDs....does it work if you give all users? Although it is still unclear why you can write but not change mtime attribute via touch as cloudron user, if I understand correctly.

I guess that needs more investigation on how to maybe workaround that...

[perelin]

@nebulon said in Storage management in Immich?:

does it work if you give all users?

Not sure what you mean here. Mounting the share with other options? I had the impression I can not do that by myself since its managed by Cloudron.

Would love to make this work. If you tell me what to try Im happy put some time in

[nebulon]

Ah sorry, that was unclear. What I meant was, if you chmod a+rw -R the folder structure? This should give all users read/write access. Maybe that works around the single user CIFS permissions.

[perelin]

Ah, got it. Tried, didnt do anything. But the whole mounted share already had like 777 permissions throughout:

drwxrwxrwx 2 808 808 0 May 21 08:56 immich/

[nebulon]

oh right well you will hit other side-effects then with apps if the filesystem is not actually support those features. This is one of the reasons, we only allow to move the app itself onto very specific filesystems like xfs and ext4. Not sure what can be done if CIFS with hetzner does not allow this. Or maybe you can investigate if you setup the mountpoint manually on the system with other mount options?

[perelin]

Yup, I guess I will experiment a bit with the mount options available. Will report back here if I find something that works, thx!

[perelin]

Footnote: sadly Immich already decided to not support setups where utime is not availble: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/14005