Help. My wife demands access to our images. (Windows, network access, multi user)

[Linuxguy123]

I'm running DK 1.6 on my Fedora 14 box with the images stored locally on
an ext3 drive.

My wife is demanding access to our images (from her Windows 7 computer).

What is the best and easiest way to accomplish this ?

I know we've discussed this before, but DK can now use MySQL as the DB
backend, so I'm wondering what has changed.

Also: what version of DK installs with the Windows KDE install ?  Is it
OK to run 2 different DK versions against the same database ?

Thanks !

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Hahaha! Great subject line. I have a similar problem (but without the windows bit).
I went with removable media, so it should be manageable.. I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll come back with some more questions another time about sharing photos and databases across computers and users.
JDR

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:39 AM, Linuxguy123 <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm running DK 1.6 on my Fedora 14 box with the images stored locally on
an ext3 drive.

My wife is demanding access to our images (from her Windows 7 computer).

What is the best and easiest way to accomplish this ?

I know we've discussed this before, but DK can now use MySQL as the DB
backend, so I'm wondering what has changed.

Also: what version of DK installs with the Windows KDE install ?  Is it
OK to run 2 different DK versions against the same database ?

Thanks !

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

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[Linuxguy123]

On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 11:07 -0600, JD Rogers wrote:
> Hahaha! Great subject line.

:laughs: Unfortunately the subject line reflects my situation as my the
situation is getting desperate.  

>  I have a similar problem (but without the windows bit).
> I went with removable media, so it should be manageable..

Tell me more.

Does each computer then have its own database or does the database sit
on the removable drive ?

I'm thinking of doing something is network storage at the same time.  I
should have added NAS into the subject line.  Actually, I just did.

Thanks !

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[Jim Dory-2]

This may not be your case but I have a NAS box (older ReadyNAS - now
from Netgear) that my wife and I share photos on. I use linux and
Digikam, she uses an IMac and probably Bridge from Adobe or something.
I also use Photoshop so also use Bridge while working in a virtual
machine's WinXP on my linux box.

So these photos are all being shared or accessed by linux, windows,
and mac, with no problems I've found yet. As long as she doesn't use a
program that reorganizes the image directories or locations, it seems
no problem. I tag photos with Digikam, and the tags are useable when
I'm in Bridge. I only use Bridge because it came with Photoshop CS3
and when I want to open an image in Photoshop I know thru Bridge where
it is. Or sometimes I have Digikam open on another virtual desktop and
don't need Bridge open.

/jd

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Linuxguy123 <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 11:07 -0600, JD Rogers wrote:
>> Hahaha! Great subject line.
>
> :laughs: Unfortunately the subject line reflects my situation as my the
> situation is getting desperate.
>
>>  I have a similar problem (but without the windows bit).
>> I went with removable media, so it should be manageable..
>
> Tell me more.
>
> Does each computer then have its own database or does the database sit
> on the removable drive ?
>
> I'm thinking of doing something is network storage at the same time.  I
> should have added NAS into the subject line.  Actually, I just did.
>
> Thanks !
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>

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[Knut Krause]

Well, does your wife need digiKam? You could just install samba and share your
images as a network drive (maybe read only?).

If she want to use digikam:
Can she use linux too? If not install digikam under windows and use the images
via network share.

If she want's to use the digiKam databse too:
I got no real clue about the storage in digiKam. Maybe it's storing whole
paths as amarok does … then it would be the best to mount the files on the same
path on every client which is quite hard with linux/windows :/ Maybe give her
just read only access to your digikam db and see if it's going to brake smth?


Knut

On Friday 10 December 2010 17:39:44 Linuxguy123 wrote:

> I'm running DK 1.6 on my Fedora 14 box with the images stored locally on
> an ext3 drive.
>
> My wife is demanding access to our images (from her Windows 7 computer).
>
> What is the best and easiest way to accomplish this ?
>
> I know we've discussed this before, but DK can now use MySQL as the DB
> backend, so I'm wondering what has changed.
>
> Also: what version of DK installs with the Windows KDE install ?  Is it
> OK to run 2 different DK versions against the same database ?
>
> Thanks !
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
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>  I have a similar problem (but without the windows bit).
> I went with removable media, so it should be manageable..

Tell me more.

Well, I have a 1TB usb drive which is my 'primary' storage of albums (I mirror it occasionally with rsync onto a second 1TB drive that stays in a different location). I configured digikam to keep the database in the photo directory on the usb drive with the idea that my wife could use the same db and then when either of us wanted to access the photos, we plug in the usb drive to either of our laptops and everything should be fine.

That was the plan. In practice, I haven't really tried it much to see what kind of problems might come up, but she do some browsing without digikam using nautilus and that went ok. I also keep as much info (tags, etc.) in the photo metadata, so rebuilding a digikam database should be no problem.

As Jim said, I think it should be ok, especially if she's not moving the directories around. Read-only should be fine, and if she wants to do editing, you could have her copy/save to a seperate dir (which is good idea regardless of who is writing changes).

Does each computer then have its own database or does the database sit
on the removable drive ?

That was what I was thinking would be the advantage of the db on the drive rather than local, but hopefully someone else weighs in with actually experience on the pros and cons of doing that.
 

I'm thinking of doing something is network storage at the same time.  I
should have added NAS into the subject line.  Actually, I just did.

Thanks !

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

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Le 10/12/2010 19:39, JD Rogers a écrit :

> That was what I was thinking would be the advantage of the db on the
> drive rather than local, but hopefully someone else weighs in with
> actually experience on the pros and cons of doing that.

with the database on the removable medium, you can edit the collection
on whatever computer you want (I do this)

jdd

--
http://www.dodin.net
http://pizzanetti.fr
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[Linuxguy123]

On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 18:39 +0100, Knut Krause wrote:
> Well, does your wife need digiKam? You could just install samba and share your
> images as a network drive (maybe read only?).

I want/need her to be able to tag and rate images.   If she can't do it,
then I'm going to have to do it for her...

> If she want to use digikam:
> Can she use linux too? If not install digikam under windows and use the images
> via network share.

She isn't a Linux user and I don't want to support her as a Linux user.

Her access pretty much has to be from Windows.

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[Linuxguy123]

On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 19:49 +0100, jdd wrote:
> Le 10/12/2010 19:39, JD Rogers a écrit :
>
> > That was what I was thinking would be the advantage of the db on the
> > drive rather than local, but hopefully someone else weighs in with
> > actually experience on the pros and cons of doing that.
>
> with the database on the removable medium, you can edit the collection
> on whatever computer you want (I do this)

Does this/ would this now work on networked storage now that MySQL is
used ?   The reason I ask is that earlier versions of DK did not allow
the db to be placed on a remote drive.  Has that changed ?

Here is what I am thinking... DK is about as good as anything for her
tagging and rating purposes.  I'll install the images (in their
heirarchy) on the NAS storage device and place the db in the root
picture dir.  

I'll have DK 1.6 installed on my Linux machine, set up to access the db
on the NAS device.  

I'll set her machine up with the Windows version of DK.

?????

LG
 


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On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Linuxguy123 <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 19:49 +0100, jdd wrote:
> Le 10/12/2010 19:39, JD Rogers a écrit :
>
> > That was what I was thinking would be the advantage of the db on the
> > drive rather than local, but hopefully someone else weighs in with
> > actually experience on the pros and cons of doing that.
>
> with the database on the removable medium, you can edit the collection
> on whatever computer you want (I do this)

Does this/ would this now work on networked storage now that MySQL is
used ?   The reason I ask is that earlier versions of DK did not allow
the db to be placed on a remote drive.  Has that changed ?

Yep. I don't remember when, but when I switched to a removable drive, it gave me the option of specifying the db location, and I rejoiced.
 

Here is what I am thinking... DK is about as good as anything for her
tagging and rating purposes.  I'll install the images (in their
heirarchy) on the NAS storage device and place the db in the root
picture dir.

I'll have DK 1.6 installed on my Linux machine, set up to access the db
on the NAS device.

I'll set her machine up with the Windows version of DK.

Seems completely reasonable. The only problem might be variations in the win vs linux version of DK and the database format. I would (a) test it out briefly on a copied test dir and make sure there aren't any obvious errors opening and changing tags/ratings/etc between the two, and (b) set DK to store as much as possible in the metadata. It takes much longer to load and move between images, but you don't loose much if the db is lost or corrupted, since DK can just rebuild from the images.

Of course, I say all that with *very* limited experience, so take it all with a huge grain of salt, but what you describe is pretty close to how I had *planned* to do it.
 

?????

LG

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Le 10/12/2010 20:33, Linuxguy123 a écrit :

> Does this/ would this now work on networked storage now that MySQL is
> used ?   The reason I ask is that earlier versions of DK did not allow
> the db to be placed on a remote drive.  Has that changed ?

it works on usb storage with sqllite, never tried mysql (I don't even
know how to install mysql on windows)

jdd

--
http://www.dodin.net
http://pizzanetti.fr
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[Graham Lambert]

Yet another idea ... have you considered setting up an Xserver on the windows system? Xming (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/) advertises that it will work on Windows 7. Using an Xserver does create quite a bit of network trafffic but it will give you access to the Linux machine as a user using an xsession directly (linux must be set up to allow an xdmcp connect). I am assuming you have not thought of this possibility.

It will look and feel like you are using the linux machine's xwindows directly, and so you are not faced with the problem of versioning or compatibility of the database - all files and activity remain on the linux machine. You are just using a window manager locally on the windows machine to display what you would see locally on the linux. You need a fast network as the mouse movements can be a bit jumpy. Just create a user for your wife with access to a common photo area (set up a group that you both belong to with the correct permissions). Link to the photo area from each user and you should be away.

You will notice a speed loss on the windows machine as all the graphic activity is also via the network. i.e. You start DK and wait for the program to load from the Linux machine, every key press and mouse movement is networked.

If you have enough excess power on the windows machine to easily run the graphics of a remote DK or Gimp session you may consider running a linux live CD and making an xdm connect from that. Most of the well known live releases offer a xserver capability - you find it at the logon menu.

I do not have the latest version of DK yet and so cannot comment on its (mulituser ?) ability with MySQL, but assuming that only one user is making updates to the database at any one time then there should not be a problem with table locking.

My wife and I have different aspirations and different cameras. With hers was included good software on Windows 7 but not as good as DK.  Her files are never over 8Mb. I use a DSLR and film scans which produce some pretty large files. Our files are commoned on a Linux machine which is used as a file server - effectively a NAS. This discussion thread caused me to consider an Xserver alternative, especially as DK can manage several camera types, so we would use one common database. I am still new to DK and haven't pushed it yet but so far it does all I need except a small problem with the RAW / NEF files - a point I want to raise elsewhere.

Having said all this, setting up an Xserver can have problems. It is worth reading the website above to get some more ideas and to see if it is an option you might want to look at.

Then again ... seeing that you both use laptops this might not be such a suitable solution, and what you're doing is about as good as it will get ... only bottleneck is the USB, and you will not be able to access the database or files concurrently.

GL


On 10/12/10 19:39, JD Rogers wrote:

>  I have a similar problem (but without the windows bit).
> I went with removable media, so it should be manageable..

Tell me more.

Well, I have a 1TB usb drive which is my 'primary' storage of albums (I mirror it occasionally with rsync onto a second 1TB drive that stays in a different location). I configured digikam to keep the database in the photo directory on the usb drive with the idea that my wife could use the same db and then when either of us wanted to access the photos, we plug in the usb drive to either of our laptops and everything should be fine.

That was the plan. In practice, I haven't really tried it much to see what kind of problems might come up, but she do some browsing without digikam using nautilus and that went ok. I also keep as much info (tags, etc.) in the photo metadata, so rebuilding a digikam database should be no problem.

As Jim said, I think it should be ok, especially if she's not moving the directories around. Read-only should be fine, and if she wants to do editing, you could have her copy/save to a seperate dir (which is good idea regardless of who is writing changes).

Does each computer then have its own database or does the database sit
on the removable drive ?

That was what I was thinking would be the advantage of the db on the drive rather than local, but hopefully someone else weighs in with actually experience on the pros and cons of doing that.
 

I'm thinking of doing something is network storage at the same time.  I
should have added NAS into the subject line.  Actually, I just did.

Thanks !

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

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[Martin (KDE)]

Am Freitag, 10. Dezember 2010 schrieb Linuxguy123:
> I'm running DK 1.6 on my Fedora 14 box with the images stored
> locally on an ext3 drive.
>
> My wife is demanding access to our images (from her Windows 7
> computer).

As someone else pointed out: samba is most likely the way to go.

>
> What is the best and easiest way to accomplish this ?
>
> I know we've discussed this before, but DK can now use MySQL as the
> DB backend, so I'm wondering what has changed.

As digikam may be able to use mysql (i have not used it), I have all
my photos on a server (NFS from linux and samba from windows clients).
As I don't like my digikam database altered by someone else than me,
my children and my wife have to use their own digikam database. All
user data are stored on the server as well, so the data are consistent
between windows and linux. With this every user can rate their
pictures to their own needs (as long they do not store the metadata
into the photos - which is forbidden by file access for most photos I
shot).

But I must confess: my wife usually order me to pick some photos
instead of doing it herself. So to about 99% I am the only one working
on photos.

Martin

>
> Also: what version of DK installs with the Windows KDE install ?
> Is it OK to run 2 different DK versions against the same database
> ?
>
> Thanks !
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

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[Graham Lambert]

Yet another idea ... have you considered setting up an Xserver on the
windows system? Xming (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/)
advertises that it will work on Windows 7. Using an Xserver does create
quite a bit of network trafffic but it will give you access to the Linux
machine as if you were a user using an xsession directly - you are
effectively adding a remote display to your Linux (linux must be set up
to allow an xdmcp connect).

Advantages
- you do not have to teach Linux; it just becomes a desktop in a window
on your wife's machine, on which she will only need to click DK ... she
will have to log in but there is no booting involved
- you are not running a virtual machine on windows as it is not the
windows machine you are using, but just a 'view port' so there is no
remote DK database synchronisation to worry about
- you do not have to move the photo album via the USB port, it will stay
on Linux with the added safety that you can determine the viewing
directories (this is not control but safety)
- samba is not involved
- no synchronisation problems (DK on Windows is not as up to date as DK
on Linux and so might not sync, and you would have to keep both versions
up to date)
- safe because the windows machine is a remote terminal. You can control
the amount of behaviour available - e.g. no root access
- when you shut down, the window on you're wife's machine will close
automatically - but she will (should) receive a warning first

Disadvantages
- depending on your setup your wife might notice a deterioration in
speed as all the graphics are run via the network (every mouse movement
and every keyboard or mouse keypress)
- setting up can be a fiddle or a huge learning experience if you are
not used to it or it doesn't go right first time

If you have enough excess power and memory on the windows machine to
easily run the graphics of a remote DK or Gimp session you may consider
running a linux live CD and making an xdmcp connect from that. Most of
the well known live releases offer a xserver capability - you find it at
the logon menu. (this does mean your wife learning a bit of Unix though)

It just depends on whether you want the concurrent access or not, but it
might be worth a try.

GL


On 10/12/10 19:39, JD Rogers wrote:

>
>     >  I have a similar problem (but without the windows bit).
>     > I went with removable media, so it should be manageable..
>
>     Tell me more.
>
>
> Well, I have a 1TB usb drive which is my 'primary' storage of albums
> (I mirror it occasionally with rsync onto a second 1TB drive that
> stays in a different location). I configured digikam to keep the
> database in the photo directory on the usb drive with the idea that my
> wife could use the same db and then when either of us wanted to access
> the photos, we plug in the usb drive to either of our laptops and
> everything should be fine.
>
> That was the plan. In practice, I haven't really tried it much to see
> what kind of problems might come up, but she do some browsing without
> digikam using nautilus and that went ok. I also keep as much info
> (tags, etc.) in the photo metadata, so rebuilding a digikam database
> should be no problem.
>
> As Jim said, I think it should be ok, especially if she's not moving
> the directories around. Read-only should be fine, and if she wants to
> do editing, you could have her copy/save to a seperate dir (which is
> good idea regardless of who is writing changes).
>
>     Does each computer then have its own database or does the database sit
>     on the removable drive ?
>
>
> That was what I was thinking would be the advantage of the db on the
> drive rather than local, but hopefully someone else weighs in with
> actually experience on the pros and cons of doing that.
>  
>
>     I'm thinking of doing something is network storage at the same
>     time.  I
>     should have added NAS into the subject line.  Actually, I just did.
>
>     Thanks !
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Digikam-users mailing list
>     [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>  

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[Timtam]

Hi, I am very new to digikam (still to install in fact). Is it now possible to have a windows 7 PC and Ubuntu laptop (home network) accessing the same digikam images and any editing/tagging being syncd between both? Thanks in advance.

[Luca Ferrari]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 1:28 AM, Timtam <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi, I am very new to digikam (still to install in fact). Is it now possible
> to have a windows 7 PC and Ubuntu laptop (home network) accessing the same
> digikam images and any editing/tagging being syncd between both? Thanks in
> advance.
>

If I get it right there are two options:
- use aynchronously a removable media
- export the collections and the database via a network shared folder
(nas, CIFS, nfs, ...)

In the second case I'm not sure digikam can handle well concurrency,
so you should start an instance at once.

Luca
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[Timtam]

Luca Ferrari wrote

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 1:28 AM, Timtam <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi, I am very new to digikam (still to install in fact). Is it now possible
> to have a windows 7 PC and Ubuntu laptop (home network) accessing the same
> digikam images and any editing/tagging being syncd between both? Thanks in
> advance.
>

If I get it right there are two options:
- use aynchronously a removable media
- export the collections and the database via a network shared folder
(nas, CIFS, nfs, ...)

In the second case I'm not sure digikam can handle well concurrency,
so you should start an instance at once.

Luca
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So if I have my images on a usb drive that I swap between Windows PC and Ubuntu this should work?

[Luca Ferrari]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 11:46 AM, Timtam <[hidden email]> wrote:
> So if I have my images on a usb drive that I swap between Windows PC and
> Ubuntu this should work?

Assuming the usb drive has a filesystem that both operating systems
can handle well (e.g., fat).

Luca
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[christian graesser]

As I understand it you need to have the digikam database as well on the USB drive, to get the changes you do in the database  on Windows to be visible in Ubuntu.
Best regards
Christian

Den 9 sep 2015 12:16 skrev "Luca Ferrari" <[hidden email]>:

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 11:46 AM, Timtam <[hidden email]> wrote:
> So if I have my images on a usb drive that I swap between Windows PC and
> Ubuntu this should work?

Assuming the usb drive has a filesystem that both operating systems
can handle well (e.g., fat).

Luca
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