Arch Linux User Repository

is it possible to ship pre-built package?

Upstream recommends using docker, for which they have pre-built images (that might also work with podman).

PostgreSQL 18 is coming to the Arch repos. Before upgrading, backup the files for vectorchord and pgvector somewhere, and then follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PostgreSQL#Upgrading_PostgreSQL instructions. (In the next release, I'll also update the postinstall message to recommend changing postgresql.conf instead of doing ALTER SYSTEM SET.)

Also, you may find yourself updating VectorChord in this process. When doing so, remember to follow the migration steps at https://docs.immich.app/administration/postgres-standalone/#updating-vectorchord .

immich-web (localhost/immich-server:2283) used to be broken for some users of this package.

As @yparitcher also noticed, this was most likely caused by the following additions to .gitignore from f4e0aad2c495, which have since be reverted:

src/
pkg/
*.pkg.tar.zst
LICENSES/

The reason—for both this change sometimes and unpredictably breaking the build, and builds under a clean chroot still working—is unknown. I meant to investigate this on 2025-08-19 while updating the package but called it a day due to the unpredictability and long time of building. Help with figuring out why this happened would be greatly appreciated.

You may notice pacman refuse to upgrade this package, saying warning: cannot resolve "vectorchord", a dependency of "immich-server".

This is due to required manual intervention within the immich server database.

Newer versions of immich server have deprecated pgvecto.rs in favor of vectorchord.

Before updating from 1.133.1 or older, please follow steps 1 and 2 of the manual migration steps (should be the second dropdown) at https://immich.app/docs/administration/postgres-standalone/#migrating-to-vectorchord and uninstall pgvecto.rs.

Remember to remove references to "vectors.so" (which is shipped by pgvecto.rs) in shared_preload_libraries before pgvecto.rs in uninstalled. (For vectorchord to work, you'll need to add "vchord.so" to shared_preload_libraries after the upgrade as well.)

After that, you may upgrade this package. Please remember to follow steps 4 and 5 of the manual migration steps after the upgrade is finished to prevent data loss.

I've been using vectorchord 1.0 for almost two weeks now. Besides having to patch immich I haven't observed any issues.

--- a/server/src/constants.ts   2025-11-19 18:46:53.000000000 +0100
+++ b/server/src/constants.ts   2025-11-20 10:23:43.544756010 +0100
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 import { ApiTag, DatabaseExtension, ExifOrientation, VectorIndex } from 'src/enum';

 export const POSTGRES_VERSION_RANGE = '>=14.0.0';
-export const VECTORCHORD_VERSION_RANGE = '>=0.3 <0.6';
+export const VECTORCHORD_VERSION_RANGE = '>=0.3 <1.1';
 export const VECTORS_VERSION_RANGE = '>=0.2 <0.4';
 export const VECTOR_VERSION_RANGE = '>=0.5 <1';

Thanks for everyone's help so far.

Do note that the vectorchord package's likely to update to 1.0.0 which immich hasn't marked as supported yet, though, while versions below 0.5.3 do not have official binaries for psql18.

This is where I'm presently stuck, after enabling the extension in psql I can no longer start it's service due to the version mismatch:

FATAL:  incompatible library "/usr/lib/postgresql/vchord.so": version mismatch
DETAIL:  Server is version 18, library is version 17.
LOG:  database system is shut down

Has anyone tried a newer version of vectorchord?

FWIW I didn't see that on the final pacman install output:

post_install does not run when the package is upgraded. Upgrades include when you reinstall a package that's already installed. You should see the message when installing immich-server on a fresh system or one with immich-server uninstalled.

Should I change the port in the provided conf example for nginx to reflect port 2283? Or should that stay at 8080?

It pretty much just depends on whether you want to expose port 8080 too or not. In theory you'd want to reserve 2283 for connections from the server and 8080 for access from outside the server but it doesn't matter too much unless your server is publicly accessible.

Should I change the port in the provided conf example for nginx to reflect port 2283? Or should that stay at 8080?

Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can establish the base table with the expected default user/pass combo.

FWIW I didn't see that on the final pacman install output:

loading packages...
warning: immich-server-2.3.1-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) immich-server-2.3.1-1

Total Installed Size:  353.33 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:        4.91 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                                                                          [##############################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                                                                        [##############################################################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                                                                             [##############################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                                                                       [##############################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                                                                     [##############################################################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) reinstalling immich-server                                                                        [##############################################################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/5) Creating system user accounts...
(2/5) Reloading system manager configuration...
(3/5) Restarting marked services...
(4/5) Creating temporary files...
(5/5) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

Mind you this was during my last rebuild just to check all the build output but for me those instructions didn't display during the initial install either. Perhaps we can create an installation how-to comment to pin? I wish AUR packages had attached Wiki pages that the uploader can use. #daydreams

Yeah, caoticofanegas's right. I also have the relevant instructions displayed in the postinstall message:

post_install() {
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m: Final steps to have a working immich instance:"
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m:     * initialise postgres and create a database called 'immich' (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PostgreSQL)\033[0m"
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m:     * add vectorchord extension to postgres's shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf under the data directory. Restart of postgres service required.\033[0m"
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m:     * enable an nginx config then start nginx.service, an example that servers immich on port 8080 is given at /usr/share/doc/immich/examples/nginx.conf\033[0m"
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m:     * ensure immich-server resolves to 127.0.0.1 and/or ::1, e.g. through /etc/hosts\033[0m"
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m:     * start/enable immich-server.service (and immich-machine-learning.service if installed)\033[0m"
    echo -e "\033[1;34mINFO\033[0m\033[1m:     * make sure firewall allows traffic through port 2283 ONLY ON SECURE NETWORKS\033[0m"
}

(https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PostgreSQL)

Do note that the vectorchord package's likely to update to 1.0.0 which immich hasn't marked as supported yet, though, while versions below 0.5.3 do not have official binaries for psql18.

@dhtseany yup, it seems to be failing to init the db as you said. Make sure you have a working psql instance running, create the db following the arch wiki for psql, and set the required config parameters on /etc/immich.conf.

Also, you might have to enable the vectorchord extension on psql while you're at it, you can follow the "source" installation guide from vectorchord https://docs.vectorchord.ai/vectorchord/getting-started/installation.html . Just skip the first step, since you've already built vectorchord from the AUR. Also, you might want to use vectorchord instead of vectorchord-immich-bin, since the latter seems to be a bit outdated.

$ journalctl -xeu immich-server.service
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]:   severity_local: 'FATAL',
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]:   severity: 'FATAL',
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]:   code: '3D000',
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]:   file: 'postinit.c',
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]:   line: '1014',
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]:   routine: 'InitPostgres'
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]: }
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas immich-server[317825]: Node.js v25.2.1
Dec 01 07:48:23 archnas systemd[1]: immich-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE

Hi @dhtseany, I've experienced the same behaviour before, immich seems to start correctly based on what systemctl status tells, but it doesn't really work. Try checking "journalctl -xeu immich-server.service" right after service startup, and browse up the log to see if it's throwing any exception.

@aliu thanks for your help!

I don't have a software firewall on this system, it's internal-only for development purposes.

Netstat doesn't show web servers occupying the port, either.

immich-healthcheck returns: curl: (7) Failed to connect to localhost port 2283 after 0 ms: Could not connect to server Fail: exit code is 7

...which suggests the web server actually isn't running, right?

I went ahead and triple-checked the immich-server service status and it look like it's frequently restarting even though it says it's running but I noted that "immich-server.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 16788." at the bottom.

Finally, I was wondering what, if any, setup prep was required of Postgresql? I'm new to this app (test driving it to try and replace Google Photos) but upon review of the provided documentation online I didn't see much discussion about the DB side of things. After reviewing the Arch Wiki page for Postgresql I found that it's service wasn't running nor had it been initialized so I did a sudo su postgresql -> initdb -D /var/lib/postgres/data -> then started postgresql service however that still didn't seem to help immich's web app start either.

Did I need to worry about any DB setup or was the immich-server install (or it's upstream scripts) somehow supposed to do that bit for me? Thanks!