Editing Openai/691353e9-c8e4-8002-9ea3-93ea859a8d5c


{{DISPLAYTITLE:Immich CLI permission fix}}

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== gpt-5 ==
=== User:  ===


=== Assistant: That screenshot sums up a very common gotcha when running Immich’s CLI inside a TrueNAS-managed container. ===
That screenshot sums up a very common gotcha when running Immich’s CLI inside a TrueNAS-managed container. The key line is:

<syntaxhighlight>Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir './.config'

</syntaxhighlight>

That’s not an Immich bug — it’s Node.js (which the Immich CLI is built with) trying to create a configuration directory in its current working directory, which inside a TrueNAS-scale container typically maps to /usr/src/app or /root. If that location isn’t writable by the user the CLI runs as, you get exactly this EACCES error.

Here’s how to fix or work around it.

===== 1. Understand what’s happening =====

The Immich CLI stores its authentication tokens in ~/.config/immich by default.
But when you execute it inside a TrueNAS App container (especially through the App Shell or Docker exec), you’re often not logged in as root or the environment variables for $HOME aren’t set. That means Node.js falls back to ./.config in the current directory, which is unwritable inside /usr/src/app.

So, it’s not the NAS mount at all — it’s a local write permission problem for that .config folder.

===== 2. Quick fix =====

Run the command with a writable config path:

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">immich --config /tmp/immich-cli-config login

</syntaxhighlight>

or, if you want it persistent:

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">mkdir -p /mnt/photos/immich-cli-config
chmod 777 /mnt/photos/immich-cli-config
immich --config /mnt/photos/immich-cli-config login

</syntaxhighlight>

That tells Immich CLI to store its auth/session info somewhere you actually control.

===== 3. Permanent solution for TrueNAS =====

If you’re running the CLI inside the TrueNAS Immich App shell:
* Add a writable mount for CLI configs, for example: - Host path: /mnt/tank/immich/config - Container path: /config
* Then run: ``<code>bash immich --config /config/cli login <syntaxhighlight>
This prevents it from ever touching /usr/src/app again.

===== 4. Sanity check =====

You can verify where it’s trying to write by running:

</syntaxhighlight>bash
echo $HOME
pwd
ls -ld .

<syntaxhighlight>
If $HOME is unset or points to /, that’s the smoking gun. You can set it temporarily with:

</syntaxhighlight>bash
export HOME=/tmp

<syntaxhighlight>
===== 5. Bonus: Running CLI from outside the container =====

You can also skip all this by running the Immich CLI on your host machine (or another Linux VM) and just point it at your Immich instance with:

</syntaxhighlight>bash
immich --server http://<immich_host>:2283

</code>``

It doesn’t have to run inside the same container.

If you show me your current docker exec or TrueNAS App shell command (and whether you’re root or not inside it), I can tell you exactly what to mount or export so it works cleanly every time.

== References ==
<references />


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