Why does lychee:sync create empty albums for some folders (only a subset of photos get imported)?

[Gpan666]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to import a large folder (~20GB) into Lychee using the CLI command php artisan lychee:sync. After the process finishes, I notice that only a few subfolders have their photos imported correctly. For many other subfolders, Lychee creates empty albums (0 photos), even though the folders contain image files.

My command:
php artisan lychee:sync /app/import/YeonWoo --album_id=86UytRy24X8YKYPzmqrrWvzk --delete_imported=0 --import_via_symlink=1

The terminal output ends with:
g... 99%
App\Jobs\RecomputeAlbumSizeJob: Processing... 99%
App\Jobs\RecomputeAlbumStatsJob: Processing... 100%
Import complete
Done tree-based syncing.

I checked storage/logs/laravel.log, but I didn't see any obvious errors (no ERROR lines related to import).

Environment:

• Lychee version: 7.7.5
• Deployment: Docker (lycheeorg/lychee:latest)
• Host OS: fnOS (which is based on Debian 12 Bookworm)
• Source folder: /app/import/YeonWoo (mounted via Docker volume)
• Target album ID: 86UytRy24X8YKYPzmqrrWvzk

What I have tried:

1. Renamed some subfolders that contained special characters like "[" and "]" to plain names (e.g., removed brackets). The issue still persists for those folders.
2. Ran the command with --verbose to get more output, but still no clear indication of why certain subfolders are skipped.
3. Verified that file permissions are readable by the web/worker user and that disk space is sufficient.

My questions:

1. Are there any known limitations in lychee:sync that cause it to skip importing photos from certain subfolders, especially when dealing with a large number of files or specific naming patterns?
2. Is there any additional debugging flag or log that can show per-file or per-folder import results, including why a file was skipped?
3. Could this be related to the total number of files or the depth of the folder structure? If so, is there a recommended workaround?

I would appreciate any insights or suggestions. Thanks in advance!

[ildyria]

Hi @Gpan666

Are there any known limitations in lychee:sync that cause it to skip importing photos from certain subfolders, especially when dealing with a large number of files or specific naming patterns?

Yes:

• Lychee has a duplicate checker.
• Lychee skips imports which are pointing to /app/public/uploads (in theory, I need to double check this)

Specific naming patterns, do not think so but Lychee looks at the exif/mime type before import.

Could this be related to the total number of files or the depth of the folder structure? If so, is there a recommended workaround?

In your deployment are you using a single container or also a worker container? Because this will have an impact.
In a single container setup, the import will be quite slow and may time out as it dispatches the import jobs synchronously.
In a Web-server Worker setup, the import is done by the workers, so you could see the album being created but the queue of photos uploaded still need to be processed.

You should check the job page : https://example.lychee.tld/admin/jobs it should give you some insights in that.