Photonix on Unraid - Blank login screen after initial setup.

[KptnKMan]

Photonix on Unraid - Blank login screen after initial setup.

[neostim]

I know this isn't a huge help but I had the same issue but can't remember what fixed it, I'm running 6.9.2 as well. I do remember following the instructions in the 2nd post on here: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/112590-support-cedev-photonix/ and have had it working ever since.

If there's any info I can provide I'd be happy to.

EDIT: I see you posted on that thread lol, I also saw my comment there which is what fixed it for me:

I also couldn't login (it hung), logs said it couldn't connect to postgres ... I had to set the postgres user to photonix accidentally, had to delete the postgres docker, clear it's app data, re-install and then it was fine.

I do believe I also had misunderstood what password to use in the postgres docker (like the previous post to me on that thread).

[KptnKMan]

@neostim hey sorry for the delayed response, I've still been trying to get this working.

I do have a some questions, as I really want to get this working and understand what's happening.

I have both my user and database set to "photonix", is that not a good idea?
I created the "photonix" database separately after the default postgres user.
I installed adminer, logged into the postgres server and executed an SQL command like this:

CREATE DATABASE photonix;
CREATE USER photonix WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'mydbpassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE photonix TO photonix;

I used these credentials to create the photonix container and have it access the database, which seems to be working correctly.
The logs above show connected to postgres, and I was able to log into photonix and set it up, but after setup I am unable to log in again. No idea why, the login prompt flashes up and is gone in a second.

Did you change the username to something else?
Did you only recreate the postgres container (and appdata) and nothing else?
When you say reinstall, you mean only postgres or photonix as well?
Are you using the same containers from Community Applications that I am?

Was there anything else you did?

[neostim]

So in my situation when I had the issue I just deleted and restarted with Postgres, right from the start in my docker compose I made the postgres default database "photonix" and username/password "postgres" (I know, terrible password practice).

Then in Photonix I set the postgres user and password to "postgres" and the database to "photonix" and from there everything worked for me.

Apologies if this isn't more helpful, I'm by no means an expert but was throwing it together fast to try it out, I ended up going with another comparable solution so haven't been using Photorec lately (it's great, I think the author is just buy being a dad right now :) ).

[KptnKMan]

Hey, thanks for responding.
Regarding the issue, I managed to get it working after some changes.
I did a few things, and some seem to line up with your experience as well.

First, I deleted everything.
Its clear now to me that photonix stores basically everything in Postgres which is good, as it reduces the time to reinstall. On my unraid setup (using the containers listed in first post) only postgres11 stores any userdata, so I was able to wipe everything, delete all the configurations and start over. After that I saw I can just stop everything (photonix, redis & postgres) and delete postgres userdata, then start back up (postgres, redis, then photonix) and have a clean installation.

The way I got everything working was I went through the photonix official docker-compose.example.yml file and made sure I am using EXACTLY the same images, those being: postgres:11.1-alpine, redis:6.2.2 and photonixapp/photonix:latest.
After that, I edited the unraid templates and tried to get everything inline with the docker-compose.example.yml file.
I also noticed that the instance refuses to work if a django secret is not set, it doesn't create one by itself as indicated. Considering so much fuss is made about known django secret keys, it seems weird that it will complain infinitely that no secret is set.

Lastly, I used the default created postgres database, and I think this might also somehow be important.
Creating a secondary database with all permissions (Using instructions in my previous comment) might well be an issue, but I haven't gone back to test this as I've been able to wipe and restart without issues. Still, would be a weird bug if that's the case that you have to dedicate an entire postgres instance or it will refuse to work as part of a shared instance.

Can I ask what solution you went with in the end?
I'm currently working through different solutions at the moment, with the intention/use-case of sharing self-hosted family photos amongst my family.

[neostim]

I'm glad you got it working! I love Photonix but have been having issues with face detection so started exploring other options (at least for now). I found damselfly and started using it, it's much the same except it uses Azure for facial recognition (everything else is local), so far I've been pretty happy but still testing.

[KptnKMan]

Yeah, I've been playing with Photonix for a few hours and I'm seeing issues as well.
The UI is having some issues, and I cannot seem to be able to edit anything from the initial admin user.
I can see the images places in the /data/photos directory, but cannot add new face or object recognitions. I cannot seem to add or edit anything tbh, not sure what's going on there or if that's by design.
Also, the "drop folder" image import function seems to not work at all, I can just place new pictures in the /data/photos directory itself and they are picked up but I setup /data/import as a dropbox folder and nothing seems to be seen (even after restarting container, I saw advised somewhere else).

Furthermore, the manage.py script appears to have some serious issues, and is creating issues for me already:

• I can create a user/superuser, but I cannot delete a user/superuser? Seriously?
• If I create a superuser without creating a NEW library with create_library, the superuser has null access. Just logs into a void.
• Cannot assign a library in createsuperuser like you can with create_user, only create a new Library for the superuser?
• Seems impossible to assign libraries to users after creation?

The idea is that I just want a single central library initially, but achieving that seems problematic.

I was looking at damselfly as well and heard good things, but encountered a strange "Segmentation fault" container crashing issue with it. I want to get back to trying samselfly as well.
I should probably open an issue there to see if there's any solution, it seems in active development.

[neostim]

Try posting on damselfly subreddit, I did this morning and had a reply from the author within 30~ minutes, I'm running it in docker on UnRAID without issue so far.

I will say I prefer Photonix/Damselfly's object detection but Photoprism for face recognition and layout, I might run Damselfly for object detection and have it write to the EXIF data, then bring it into Photoprism for management/face matching.

[KptnKMan]

Thanks @neostim I don't want to get too much into the damselfly issue here, as its not this project to be fair, but I just now opened an issue on the damselfly github. I'll take a look at the subreddit and see if there's anything there as well, thanks!

If you have time, I would really appreciate you taking a look at the github issue 334 and see if you can reproduce it as simply as I can? It would really help especially as you're using Unraid also.

Apart from that, I'm still testing Photonix alongside Photoprism and Damselfly to see if I can get somewhere.