The original post: /r/selfhosted by /u/OriginalPlayerHater on 2025-01-17 06:03:35.
Just sharing my experience tonight in case someone else runs into it.
The problem:
I moved computers and my Immich installation was on an external, but I lost the original folder where PostgreSQL was configured. No database means my library was showing empty.
The solution:
Luckily, the Immich main folder has a backup folder with the database SQL files. This can be used to restore the database.
Steps to fix:
- Dropped the existing database in PostgreSQL (immich):
Run the following command to drop the old database:
docker exec -it immich_postgres psql -U postgres -c "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS immich;"
2. Restored from the backup using the SQL dump file:
Assuming your backup file is located at E:/immich/backups/immich-db-backup-1736676000009.sql, use this command to restore:
cat E:/immich/backups/immich-db-backup-1736676000009.sql | docker exec -i immich_postgres psql -U postgres -d immich
3. Ran into an issue with password authentication — Immich couldn’t connect to PostgreSQL:
The error was related to incorrect password authentication. To fix this, I reset the password for the postgres user:
docker exec -it immich_postgres psql -U postgres -c "ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD 'postgres';"
4. Updated the .env file with the correct password:
Ensure the .env file has the correct password:
DB_PASSWORD=postgres
5. Restarted the containers to apply the changes:
Run these commands to restart your containers:
docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d
Result:
Everything’s back up and running smoothly! No data lost, library restored, and Immich is working perfectly again.