Self Host
Hello,
Is Ente Photos self-hostable? Does it work well? I have several Google Photos albums with friends and we are looking for an alternative so we don't have to pay Google. I looked at Immich, but I can't see myself deploying Immich and integrating my friends into it when it's not E2EE and I would have access to their photos and videos. I consider photos to be very private.
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I'm sorry, I couldn't find the answer in the documentation.
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Hello, I am using ente since a couple of time now, was using google photo before, and yes ente is selfhostable and works really great (some thumbnails are still just dark sometimes) but except that it's working really perfectly
Maybe need a little bit to be tech savvy if you want to selfhosted it with a reverse proxy ... but don't hesitate
Thanks @Get'Rekt
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Do you use it with your family and friends or by yourself?
Only by myself, but I just setted up a complete new instance for my parents today
Why a new instance? Can't you make users private?
(because I want to completely separate the instances, I didn't want to create a user for my parents)
oooh
ok
We agree that it's E2ee and that you don't have access to their account and photos/videos? (physically)
Yes yes I think users are private, but for the backup of my data I am using restic and it was easier for me to create a completely new instance (in a totally different folder, actually differente virtual machine) for this
That's my only problem. I wanted to try Immich, but if I do, I'll have access to my friends' photos and videos. So I'll have to go with Ente instead
As I understand yes it's excatly that, you have access to file but they are encrypted (even for you the owner of the physical machine the system is running on)
And it seems to me that you don't have access to change their password.
Yes imich "just" store images and videos in clear
Yes, bad for my usage
like if you have access to the machine you can see IMG....png
y
I'd love to try it out, but I don't have a machine yet to test self-hosting on Ente. However, we're planning to buy a hard drive, etc. for our group of friends. I do have one question, though: how do we back it up?
How does it work to log in, etc.?
Yeah, but I think they refuse to do E2EE because all the “complicated” stuff is done by the server, not the client.
I may be wrong but in E2EE it's the 'client' app that encrypt the data not the server
Yes
The login process it pretty simple I may say, user name password and 2FA if you want
But precisely, they don't want to integrate it because they want complicated tasks to be handled by the server and not by the client, I think.
about the backup I personnaly back up the whole folder named ente
Are you on a computer right now ? or a phone or tablet ?
What are you backing it up to? Just a folder on another disk?
Computer right now
Because if you have a computer you can (with docker for example) try it out
I've never used Docker, I'm new to deployment
You don't especially need a server (it would just be "complicated" to make it accessible for your friends but not impossible)
If it allows me to test it while we wait to buy a hard drive, that could be nice.
Opinion vary about docker, some really don't like it for some reason but personnally I use it for everything I self host, so an advice I could give you if you are interesting in selfhosted services, is to learn at least a little bit docker
I will, ty bro
Yes of course, you could play with the album, archive, hidden folder ...
I would like to “test” the interface, actually.
Oh, so yes it would be totally possible for you to do that by selfhosting it on you own computer
Windows ?
and while you use the desktop app you would just connect on http://localhost:XXXX
y
yes, mac os, linux
that's a cool things about docker, it works almost everywhere
I didn't know I could do that.
sometimes you could have trouble for example with mac os and m1 (arm) processor architecture, because docker image would be build for amd64 architecture (I am not really good at it so I could be wrong)
Yes, i see
Bust most of the time yes with docker you can run anything
Is it easy to set up on Windows? Ente?
with docker
I only set it up with docker personnaly (and if you check for the official documentation of ente, they activelly recommend/provide guide to use docker)
I didn't set up docker for local usage personnally, all my instance are accessible via the world wild web, so it just add a little bit of complexity
But I really don't think it's hard to set up
One thing I spend a looooot of time was troubleshooting a 404 error, and it was just because I had to create a folder my self ^^
lmao
I will try so
If you want I can give you a yt video of someone showing how to set it up, but this one is one year old so nowadays it's a little bit different (easier, IMO)
in the video he is talking about a museum.yaml file and a credentials.yalm file, so it's what I setted up like 6 months ago, and now their is only one configuration file that contains information from both file
6 mo ago you needed a provisionning container (not neeed anymore today)
so a (little bit) less configuration
Can I DM you? Maybe you can create a temporary fresh instance for me so I can see the admin settings and how it works? if you have time, of course. My friend (who knows more about this stuff) has a physical server, and we're going to buy a hard drive, but I want to see how it works in terms of the interface, etc., before we decide whether to use immich or ente
On your computer you mean ?
And before self hosting it, you can just use the official server
like download the windows desktop app and just create an account
and upload random pictures you get from internet, you have like 5 or 10 gb for free for ever
ente
Ente Photos: Stockez et partagez vos photos en toute confidentialité
Ente Photos est l'application de stockage photo privée, sécurisée et chiffrée de bout en bout. Multiplateforme, open source et auto-hébergeable. Commencez avec 10 Go gratuits.
my bad, french website ^^
ente
Ente Photos: Store and share your photos with absolute privacy
Ente Photos is the private, secure photo storage app with end-to-end encryption. Cross-platform, open source, and self-hostable. Start with 10GB free.
like that you could try it on the desktop, on you mobile or tablet ...
Album sharing seems to be missing in the free plan, but I never used it to be honest so I couldn't really help you with that sorry
Are you as French as I am? Actually, I mainly wanted to see the settings that we have access to in “admin,” the settings that we could change in the dashboard, etc. Yes, I already use Ente. Thanks for all your time and infos!
I don't know ahah, I am french yes
Oh, I don't really think the interface differ due to the fact that my account is an admin one
Do we add users directly to the dashboard?
I really think the interface of mobile and dekstop app are the same as user who use the companie hosted instance
No, they create account and the owner of the server have to check the logs for the one time password
or you can set up a smtp server I think, to send an email to the user ...
and via the cli you could change user storage limit
And then the user can change the password so that the owner no longer knows it?
And there are no limits on self-hosting? Album sharing, etc., etc.?
I don't know if you can set a custom limit, in my case I used a command that gives me 100 to of storage (even if my server don't have haha) and 100 years account expiration
The owner never see your password
"No, they create account and the owner of the server have to check the logs for the one time password"
I mean the user create an account, provide an email, a password, but in the logs the server owner only see email
okok
Do you see website that send you an email with like 6 number when you want to connect ?
2FA, yes?
yes
2FA ^^
via email (but also print in the console)
but it's just for the first connection
i see
like to initialise the account and don't be spammed by random people who create account and upload things on your server, so your storage, and saturate your storage
Is there no paywall on the self-hosted version of ente?
sharing albums, etc
like free version
As I know the only limit is your storage ^^
Too good
No, actually their if one, like you have the menu that tell you you can upgrade your storage but I think this one don't work since it's a selfhosted version
and you just have to ask for your server owner to give you unlimited storage (I don't know if you could choose the limitation, probably)
Yes
like in your case you maybe would say with your friend "ok everyone has paid for the hard drive of X gb, so every one has access to y gb of storage"
Yes, it will be that
In my case I just remove the limit because it's my own disk
Seems fair IMO
We're going to buy 2TB, but we need to think about backup in case the disk crashes one day.
Yes, good practice my friend
I know that Immich is a “copy” of Google Photos. Is using it basically the same as using Google Photos?
I personnally use restic (free open source software) and I pay a cloud provider for cloud storage
for ente*
I know that immich really really try to look like google photo (graphically)
But then, can't the cloud provider read the photos and videos you store on it? (the backup)?
First : no because ente encrypt the data
But is the encrypted data linked to your “account”? Can it only be restored on your instance, or is there a password on the backup archive?
so what I do is like copy the data (encrypted) from my physical hard drive into the cloud provider drive
With a password (seed phrase as I understand)
ooh ok
so technically I could go anywhere in the world with internet, my cloud provider account and I could restore it
and all passwords that include of course
And I am using restic personnally, who encrypt the backup before sending it anywhere
But your backup folder must be huge, right? If it's 2TB, for example, it's a pain to put it on a cloud provider, isn't it?
and to communicate with the cloud provider I use an other tool that encrypt the data once again ^^
Which one?
interesting
If you use all the 2TB, you would need 2 TB on the cloud provider yes
maybe a little bit less because I think (if you use restic) it can compress the data before (or while) performing the backup
rclone
free open source software again ^^
Thanks for all and your time, really appreciate it
No problem my friend
So in case my server just die for any reason, I would be sad and have to buy a new one, but I don't lose anything 🤞
Don't hesitate if you need, If I am available I would love helping you as much as I can with my small knowledge
Thanks bro
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