Postgres authentication error using Compose plugin

Nick0 · Oct 1st 2025

Hello all,

After some help here with including my environment variables in the Compose plugin, I am back with another issue. When pressing 'up' in the plugin, with my compose and variable files added and correctly edited, I get this error:

"PostgresError: password authentication failed for user "postgres""

The odd thing is that I have already run this application outside of the Compose plugin, and it worked. I can't understand what might be wrong but the logs would definitely suggest a postgres authentication error. The default password for postgres is "postgres", i have changed mine to a 20 character string of upper, lowercase letters and numbers (no special characters).

Logs from the troublesome container are here and my compose file and environment variables are below:

Compose:

Code

#
# WARNING: To install Immich, follow our guide: https://immich.app/docs/install/docker-compose
#
# Make sure to use the docker-compose.yml of the current release:
#
# https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
#
# The compose file on main may not be compatible with the latest release.

name: immich

services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends:
    #   file: hwaccel.transcoding.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [nvenc, quicksync, rkmpp, vaapi, vaapi-wsl] for accelerated transcoding
    volumes:
      # Do not edit the next line. If you want to change the media storage location on your system, edit the value of UPLOAD_LOCATION in the .env file
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/data
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    ports:
      - '2283:2283'
    depends_on:
      - redis
      - database
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

  immich-machine-learning:
    container_name: immich_machine_learning
    # For hardware acceleration, add one of -[armnn, cuda, rocm, openvino, rknn] to the image tag.
    # Example tag: ${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}-cuda
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends: # uncomment this section for hardware acceleration - see https://immich.app/docs/features/ml-hardware-acceleration
    #   file: hwaccel.ml.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [armnn, cuda, rocm, openvino, openvino-wsl, rknn] for accelerated inference - use the `-wsl` version for WSL2 where applicable
    volumes:
      - model-cache:/cache
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

  redis:
    container_name: immich_redis
    image: docker.io/valkey/valkey:8-bookworm@sha256:fea8b3e67b15729d4bb70589eb03367bab9ad1ee89c876f54327fc7c6e618571
    healthcheck:
      test: redis-cli ping || exit 1
    restart: always

  database:
    container_name: immich_postgres
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/postgres:14-vectorchord0.4.3-pgvectors0.2.0@sha256:41eacbe83eca995561fe43814fd4891e16e39632806253848efaf04d3c8a8b84
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
      POSTGRES_DB: ${DB_DATABASE_NAME}
      UPLOAD_LOCATION: ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}
      DATABASE_LOCATION: ${DB_DATA_LOCATION}
      TIMEZONE: ${TZ}
      POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS: '--data-checksums'
      # Uncomment the DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD' var if your database isn't stored on SSDs
      # DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD'
    volumes:
      # Do not edit the next line. If you want to change the database storage location on your system, edit the value of DB_DATA_LOCATION in the .env file
      - ${DB_DATA_LOCATION}:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    shm_size: 128mb
    restart: always

volumes:
  model-cache:

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Environment variables:

Code

# You can find documentation for all the supported env variables at https://immich.app/docs/install/environment-variables

# The location where your uploaded files are stored
  UPLOAD_LOCATION=/NAS/AppData/immich_lib

# The location where your database files are stored. Network shares are not supported for the database
  DB_DATA_LOCATION=/NAS/AppData/immich_db

# To set a timezone, uncomment the next line and change Etc/UTC to a TZ identifier from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones#List
  TZ=Etc/UTC

# The Immich version to use. You can pin this to a specific version like "v1.71.0"
# IMMICH_VERSION=release

# Connection secret for postgres. You should change it to a random password
# Please use only the characters `A-Za-z0-9`, without special characters or spaces
  DB_PASSWORD=<redacted>

# The values below this line do not need to be changed
###################################################################################
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich

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ryecoaaron · Oct 2nd 2025

I don't use immich but it looks like the container doesn't have the postgres password and you aren't passing the postgres password to the immich container in the compose file. As I mentioned before, when you use the env_file parameter in a compose file, it automatically passes all values in the env_file to the container. You need to manually pass the environment variables to each container that needs them. While this may seem like extra work, it is better in my opinion because you aren't passing environment variables to container that don't need them.

Nick0 · Oct 4th 2025

Quote from ryecoaaron

I don't use immich but it looks like the container doesn't have the postgres password and you aren't passing the postgres password to the immich container in the compose file. As I mentioned before, when you use the env_file parameter in a compose file, it automatically passes all values in the env_file to the container. You need to manually pass the environment variables to each container that needs them. While this may seem like extra work, it is better in my opinion because you aren't passing environment variables to container that don't need them.

Many thanks,

So, does this mean that I should add:

Code

environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}

to the part of the compose file that deals with the container_name: immich_server, right at the top (line 13)? Is this what you mean by: "manually pass the environment variables to each container that needs them."?

I was under the impression that the variables at the bottom of the compose file were used for the whole file, but is it really the case that they also need to be added to the part of the compose file that has the container that will be calling for them? Sorry, I am probably not explaining this very well!

If I try adding POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD} like this:

Code

services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
    # extends:
    #   file: hwaccel.transcoding.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [nvenc, quicksync, rkmpp, vaapi, vaapi-wsl] for accelerated transcoding
    volumes:

... I am still getting the same error.

So, it seems that I am still not understanding this. I did rum immich up without the compose plugin and it worked (this was with the compose and .env file in the same folder and using the docker-compose up -d command, so I am thinking the current problem means that things need to be done differently with the plugin.

Thanks,

Nick.

ryecoaaron · Oct 4th 2025

Quote from Nick0

So, it seems that I am still not understanding this. I did rum immich up without the compose plugin and it worked (this was with the compose and .env file in the same folder and using the docker-compose up -d command, so I am thinking the current problem means that things need to be done differently with the plugin.

You are doing it different since you took the env_file param out of the compose file. You can add it back. The .env file will just be named immich.env (or whatever you named the compose file).

Nick0 · Oct 7th 2025

Quote from ryecoaaron

You are doing it different since you took the env_file param out of the compose file. You can add it back. The .env file will just be named immich.env (or whatever you named the compose file).

Thank you for spotting that, ryecoaaron - I'm not even sure why I removed that! Good to know how the .env file is named, too and it's all working now thanks to you. I also learned about environment variables Thanks again for helping me to fix this - just the 15,000 photos to migrate manually now :O

ryecoaaron · Oct 8th 2025

Quote from Nick0

I'm not even sure why I removed that!

I told you to. But adding the variables need to the right services can be difficult with multi-service compose files. Your original env_file would've had to have the filename changed though.

Postgres authentication error using Compose plugin

Nick0 Oct 7th 2025

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