Damselfly on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
by cloudimg
Self hosted photo management and deduplication on a data disk, secured per instance over TLS.
Damselfly is a self hosted, server based photograph management and de-duplication application. It is designed to index an extremely large collection of images and make them easy to search and retrieve using metadata such as IPTC keyword tags, folder names and file names. It serves a fast, modern browser interface for browsing, searching, tagging and downloading your photos, and includes optional on device object and face detection so you can find images by what is in them. This image delivers it fully installed and secured so a working photo library is operational within minutes of launch.
Secure by default
Stock Damselfly ships with authentication turned off, which would leave every image open to anyone who can reach the server, and when authentication is enabled the first person to register becomes the administrator. This image turns authentication on, disables self registration, and generates a unique administrator credential on each virtual machine's first boot. Only a one way hash of the password is stored in the database, while the plain password is placed in a root only file for the administrator to read. There are no shared or default credentials and nothing is baked into the image, so no two deployments are ever the same.
Hardened and ready on first boot
- The interface is served over HTTPS on port 443 by nginx, which terminates TLS with a self signed certificate regenerated per VM on first boot, and reverse proxies to Damselfly bound to loopback only. Port 80 redirects to HTTPS.
- Your photos, the thumbnail cache and the search index live on a dedicated data disk mounted at /var/lib/damselfly, provisioned automatically with every VM.
- A small set of sample photos is included so the gallery is populated the moment you sign in; replace them with your own.
- Object and face recognition are included but off by default; enable them from the settings page when you want them. The application runs in the official Damselfly container under systemd for automatic restarts.
Why cloudimg
cloudimg delivers Damselfly fully patched on a hardened Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base, serving on first boot, with no shared credentials and your data on a dedicated disk. Every image passes an automated verification gate and is backed by 24/7 support with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA.
Licensing
Damselfly is open source software distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, and is free. The cloudimg charge covers packaging, hardening, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 support. A step by step deployment guide is provided.