PiGallery2 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
by cloudimg
Fast self hosted photo gallery on a dedicated data disk, secured with a per instance login over
PiGallery2 is a fast, open source, directory first photo gallery and management server. You point it at a folder of photos and videos and it serves a modern browser gallery that preserves your directory structure, generates thumbnails, reads EXIF metadata, and adds search, maps, face grouping and secure sharing. It is an ideal way to browse and share a personal or team photo library from any device, without handing your photos to a third party cloud. This image delivers it fully installed and secured so a working gallery is operational within minutes of launch.
Secure by default
When password protection is enabled, PiGallery2 will otherwise create a well known default administrator, which would leave an unprotected gallery open to anyone who can reach it. This image turns authentication on and generates a unique administrator credential on each virtual machine's first boot. Only a one way bcrypt hash of the password is written to the configuration, 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 gallery 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 PiGallery2 bound to loopback only. Port 80 redirects to HTTPS.
- Your photos, the thumbnail cache and the SQLite index live on a dedicated data disk mounted at /var/lib/pigallery2, 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.
- ffmpeg is installed so video thumbnails work out of the box, and the service runs as an unprivileged system user under systemd.
Why cloudimg
cloudimg delivers PiGallery2 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
PiGallery2 is open source software distributed under the MIT License, 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.