Shared collection

[Emmanuel Lacour]

Dear digikam users,

Does anyone knows if there is a way to configure digikam and collections
so two users on the same computer can have their own collections, and a
common one?

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[Martin (KDE)]

Am Samstag, 5. Juni 2010 schrieb Emmanuel Lacour:
> Dear digikam users,
>
> Does anyone knows if there is a way to configure digikam and
> collections so two users on the same computer can have their own
> collections, and a common one?

Yes, for sure.

Create as many collections as you want for your own and add one let
say in the folder /family/photo. Set permissions of this folder that
all users of a given group can access this folder (for unix/linux:
"chgrp family /family/photo" and perimission "chmod 2775
/family/photo" - this assumes that the group family already exists -
and set umask of all users to 0002).

In the given folder all members of the family group have access to the
files. The users have to add the collection to their digikam of
course.

This is basically more an operating system problem than a digikam one.
What kind of OS are you using?

Martin

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[Remco Viëtor]

on Saturday 05 June 2010, Martin (KDE) wrote:

>
> Am Samstag, 5. Juni 2010 schrieb Emmanuel Lacour:
> > Dear digikam users,
> >
> > Does anyone knows if there is a way to configure digikam and
> > collections so two users on the same computer can have their own
> > collections, and a common one?
>
> Yes, for sure.
>
> Create as many collections as you want for your own and add one let
> say in the folder /family/photo. Set permissions of this folder that
> all users of a given group can access this folder (for unix/linux:
> "chgrp family /family/photo" and perimission "chmod 2775
> /family/photo" - this assumes that the group family already exists -
> and set umask of all users to 0002).
>
> In the given folder all members of the family group have access to the
> files. The users have to add the collection to their digikam of
> course.

Does that mean there is one database per collection, on one database per user?
If the latter, several things could happen:
- the databases for each user get out of sync (not too much of a problem
probably if you rescans collections at start-up
- if you write tags etc. to the image files, one user can easily overwrite the
items set by the other user, who would then have information in his database
that is different from the actual information in the files.

So, indeed having a shared photo collection in itself is easy, whether Digikam
can handle is correctly I'm not sure.


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[Emmanuel Lacour]

On Sat, Jun 05, 2010 at 06:05:00PM +0200, Martin (KDE) wrote:
> In the given folder all members of the family group have access to the
> files. The users have to add the collection to their digikam of
> course.
>
> This is basically more an operating system problem than a digikam one.
> What kind of OS are you using?
>

The OS problem isn't one, I already know how to share directories and
play with unix permissions or POSIX ACLs, I'm using Linux. The problem
is the digikam DB. I used at most XMP to store meta-data, but digikam
keep some things in it's DB. So how to share it?


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[Martin (KDE)]

Am Samstag, 5. Juni 2010 schrieb Remco Viëtor:

> on Saturday 05 June 2010, Martin (KDE) wrote:
> > Am Samstag, 5. Juni 2010 schrieb Emmanuel Lacour:
> > > Dear digikam users,
> > >
> > > Does anyone knows if there is a way to configure digikam and
> > > collections so two users on the same computer can have their
> > > own collections, and a common one?
> >
> > Yes, for sure.
> >
> > Create as many collections as you want for your own and add one
> > let say in the folder /family/photo. Set permissions of this
> > folder that all users of a given group can access this folder
> > (for unix/linux: "chgrp family /family/photo" and perimission
> > "chmod 2775 /family/photo" - this assumes that the group family
> > already exists - and set umask of all users to 0002).
> >
> > In the given folder all members of the family group have access
> > to the files. The users have to add the collection to their
> > digikam of course.
>
> Does that mean there is one database per collection, on one
> database per user?

There is one database per user.

> If the latter, several things could happen:
> - the databases for each user get out of sync (not too much of a
> problem probably if you rescans collections at start-up

You have to enable rescan at start-up. This I have enabled anyway, as
I handle raw photos with ufraw. Digikam seems to recognise changes in
the pictures and rescans the data.

> - if you write tags etc. to the image files, one user can easily
> overwrite the items set by the other user, who would then have
> information in his database that is different from the actual
> information in the files.

I see your problem and it is one. I have tested this and tag or
caption changes don't get trough from one digikam user to another one.
Even if you update the file timestamp on metadata change digikam of
the other user will not update the metadata. I see this as a bug,
isn't it?

>
> So, indeed having a shared photo collection in itself is easy,
> whether Digikam can handle is correctly I'm not sure.

At the moment: No, digikam can not handle it automatically. You must
reread metadata from files by hand.

I have most of my photos on my server (access via NFS) and share them
with the rest of my family, but I must confess that they usually don't
change anything (and don't use digikam). I am interested to get this
fixed.

Martin
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[Martin (KDE)]

Am Samstag, 5. Juni 2010 schrieb Emmanuel Lacour:

> On Sat, Jun 05, 2010 at 06:05:00PM +0200, Martin (KDE) wrote:
> > In the given folder all members of the family group have access
> > to the files. The users have to add the collection to their
> > digikam of course.
> >
> > This is basically more an operating system problem than a digikam
> > one. What kind of OS are you using?
>
> The OS problem isn't one, I already know how to share directories
> and play with unix permissions or POSIX ACLs, I'm using Linux. The
> problem is the digikam DB. I used at most XMP to store meta-data,
> but digikam keep some things in it's DB. So how to share it?

If you want to share your whole collections, you can share your
digikam-DB as well, but this is not a way I can go, as I have some
collections of my own.

But I think photo relevant entries in the digikam-DB are in the XMP
metadata as well but not for raw files. I think this problem will be
solvable as soon as the exif sidecar files are available in digikam.
With this feature, digikam can detect a metadata change very easy.

Martin
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[Marcel Wiesweg]

> > - if you write tags etc. to the image files, one user can easily
> > overwrite the items set by the other user, who would then have
> > information in his database that is different from the actual
> > information in the files.
>
> I see your problem and it is one. I have tested this and tag or
> caption changes don't get trough from one digikam user to another one.
> Even if you update the file timestamp on metadata change digikam of
> the other user will not update the metadata. I see this as a bug,
> isn't it?

If the two digikam instances run on the same session (DBus session bus)
changes will be propagated.
Otherwise, they wont; by which means should they? It would require some small
server between them. It's a feature not implemented.

Marcel
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[Martin (KDE)]

Am Samstag, 5. Juni 2010 schrieb Marcel Wiesweg:

> > > - if you write tags etc. to the image files, one user can
> > > easily overwrite the items set by the other user, who would
> > > then have information in his database that is different from
> > > the actual information in the files.
> >
> > I see your problem and it is one. I have tested this and tag or
> > caption changes don't get trough from one digikam user to another
> > one. Even if you update the file timestamp on metadata change
> > digikam of the other user will not update the metadata. I see
> > this as a bug, isn't it?
>
> If the two digikam instances run on the same session (DBus session
> bus) changes will be propagated.
> Otherwise, they wont; by which means should they? It would require
> some small server between them. It's a feature not implemented.

I think you took me wrong. Lets assume there are two users, Bob and
Sally. Bob has collections in folder /a, /b and /c. sally has
collections in /b, /c and /d. Both users uses the computer
exclusively. Both writes the metadata to file.

Bob adds an new photo paris.jpeg to folder /c and changes the tags to
location|France|Paris.

Sally (some times later) gets this new photo (as it is new) with the
tag. She adds a text "Lovely trip to Paris" as caption to the photo.

If Bob starts his digikam after Sally logged out he will not see the
changes made by Sally (at least with my digikam version 1.2). He has
to hit "reread metadata from files" to get them. But to do this, he
has to make wild guesses if the metadata have changed or not.

It would be great, if digikam can do this automatically and mark all
those files where metadata of the file and in the DB do not match. Or
use the data from the file (configurable by dialogue).

>
> Marcel

Martin
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[Marcel Wiesweg]

> I think you took me wrong. Lets assume there are two users, Bob and
> Sally. Bob has collections in folder /a, /b and /c. sally has
> collections in /b, /c and /d. Both users uses the computer
> exclusively. Both writes the metadata to file.
>
> Bob adds an new photo paris.jpeg to folder /c and changes the tags to
> location|France|Paris.
>
> Sally (some times later) gets this new photo (as it is new) with the
> tag. She adds a text "Lovely trip to Paris" as caption to the photo.
>
> If Bob starts his digikam after Sally logged out he will not see the
> changes made by Sally (at least with my digikam version 1.2). He has
> to hit "reread metadata from files" to get them. But to do this, he
> has to make wild guesses if the metadata have changed or not.
>
> It would be great, if digikam can do this automatically and mark all
> those files where metadata of the file and in the DB do not match. Or
> use the data from the file (configurable by dialogue).

Ok, I see the problem.
Assuming the modification date changes when Sally writes the metadata (option
can be turned off), digikam at least has a chance to know that the file was
modified.
Usually, not a full scan is done at next  start, only a scan of "hard"
metadata, because not everyone writes metadata to images, not everyone wants a
full rescan. We could add an option to do a full rescan when the modification
date changes, to cover cases such as yours.

Marcel
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[Martin (KDE)]

Am Sonntag, 6. Juni 2010 schrieb Marcel Wiesweg:

> > I think you took me wrong. Lets assume there are two users, Bob
> > and Sally. Bob has collections in folder /a, /b and /c. sally
> > has collections in /b, /c and /d. Both users uses the computer
> > exclusively. Both writes the metadata to file.
> >
> > Bob adds an new photo paris.jpeg to folder /c and changes the
> > tags to location|France|Paris.
> >
> > Sally (some times later) gets this new photo (as it is new) with
> > the tag. She adds a text "Lovely trip to Paris" as caption to
> > the photo.
> >
> > If Bob starts his digikam after Sally logged out he will not see
> > the changes made by Sally (at least with my digikam version
> > 1.2). He has to hit "reread metadata from files" to get them.
> > But to do this, he has to make wild guesses if the metadata have
> > changed or not.
> >
> > It would be great, if digikam can do this automatically and mark
> > all those files where metadata of the file and in the DB do not
> > match. Or use the data from the file (configurable by dialogue).
>
> Ok, I see the problem.
> Assuming the modification date changes when Sally writes the
> metadata (option can be turned off), digikam at least has a chance
> to know that the file was modified.
> Usually, not a full scan is done at next  start, only a scan of
> "hard" metadata, because not everyone writes metadata to images,
> not everyone wants a full rescan. We could add an option to do a
> full rescan when the modification date changes, to cover cases
> such as yours.

This would be great. So I enable update timestamp if metadata changes
on all my users and digikam will automatically find these changes
right? (If I have enabled the option you mentioned above)

>
> Marcel

Martin
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[Marcel Wiesweg]

> > Ok, I see the problem.
> > Assuming the modification date changes when Sally writes the
> > metadata (option can be turned off), digikam at least has a chance
> > to know that the file was modified.
> > Usually, not a full scan is done at next  start, only a scan of
> > "hard" metadata, because not everyone writes metadata to images,
> > not everyone wants a full rescan. We could add an option to do a
> > full rescan when the modification date changes, to cover cases
> > such as yours.
>
> This would be great. So I enable update timestamp if metadata changes
> on all my users and digikam will automatically find these changes
> right? (If I have enabled the option you mentioned above)

Yes in theory, but this option does not yet exist ;-) I'll put it on my TODO
list right now.
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[Vlado Plaga]

Hi Marcel, Martin, Emmanuel, and everyone interested in sharing
collections,

let me direct your attention to this rather old bug/ feature request:

"Transparent update of picture content and metadata after file update
and on software start"
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173632

I'm also still waiting for this option to re-read metadata on modified
files whenever digiKam starts.

At the moment I don't even know how to properly use digikam on two
different operating systems (Linux and Mac OS) with just one user (on
just one computer). Could I just make a symlink to digikam4.db on one
system (i.e. Mac OS)? Does the digiKam and KDE version have to be
exactly the same? What about the directory path to the collection, can
it be different?

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[Gilles Caulier-4]

Use last digiKam 1.3.0 version where Mysql support have been
implemented. It's possible to set a remote Database over the network
shared between more tahn one computer.

As digiKam support remote collections, using network file system (NFS
for ex), all is there for you...

More info :

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/521

Gilles Caulier

2010/6/8 Vlado Plaga <[hidden email]>:

> Hi Marcel, Martin, Emmanuel, and everyone interested in sharing
> collections,
>
> let me direct your attention to this rather old bug/ feature request:
>
> "Transparent update of picture content and metadata after file update
> and on software start"
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173632
>
> I'm also still waiting for this option to re-read metadata on modified
> files whenever digiKam starts.
>
> At the moment I don't even know how to properly use digikam on two
> different operating systems (Linux and Mac OS) with just one user (on
> just one computer). Could I just make a symlink to digikam4.db on one
> system (i.e. Mac OS)? Does the digiKam and KDE version have to be
> exactly the same? What about the directory path to the collection, can
> it be different?
>
> --
>
>       Vlado Plaga                        __o
>    http://vlado-do.de                 _o/\<,_
>    update: 2010-01-11                 (U)/ (u)
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[Emmanuel Lacour]

On Tue, Jun 08, 2010 at 02:45:03PM +0200, Gilles Caulier wrote:
> Use last digiKam 1.3.0 version where Mysql support have been
> implemented. It's possible to set a remote Database over the network
> shared between more tahn one computer.
>
> As digiKam support remote collections, using network file system (NFS
> for ex), all is there for you...
>

nice, I'm going to test this. But using this way, all users will see all
collections (depending on FS rights of courses). There is no realy way
to do per user Collections using a shared DB, right?

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[Gilles Caulier-4]

2010/6/8 Emmanuel Lacour <[hidden email]>:

> On Tue, Jun 08, 2010 at 02:45:03PM +0200, Gilles Caulier wrote:
>> Use last digiKam 1.3.0 version where Mysql support have been
>> implemented. It's possible to set a remote Database over the network
>> shared between more tahn one computer.
>>
>> As digiKam support remote collections, using network file system (NFS
>> for ex), all is there for you...
>>
>
> nice, I'm going to test this. But using this way, all users will see all
> collections (depending on FS rights of courses). There is no realy way
> to do per user Collections using a shared DB, right?

As multiples remote collections are supported, just the the right
entry in front digiKam computer

Gilles
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[Marcel Wiesweg]

> Hi Marcel, Martin, Emmanuel, and everyone interested in sharing
> collections,
>
> let me direct your attention to this rather old bug/ feature request:
>
> "Transparent update of picture content and metadata after file update
> and on software start"
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173632
>
> I'm also still waiting for this option to re-read metadata on modified
> files whenever digiKam starts.
>
> At the moment I don't even know how to properly use digikam on two
> different operating systems (Linux and Mac OS) with just one user (on
> just one computer). Could I just make a symlink to digikam4.db on one
> system (i.e. Mac OS)?
> Does the digiKam and KDE version have to be
> exactly the same? What about the directory path to the collection, can
> it be different?

For this (and other) reasons digikam normally stores collections by the
partitions UUID. That means, if KDE Solid is properly implemented on Mac OS X
- I dont know if it is - you should be able to use the same database file and
photo directories, on a partition accessed by both OSs.
Make backups and try...it works or not ;-)

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[Milan Knížek]

Marcel Wiesweg píše v Ne 06. 06. 2010 v 17:06 +0200:

> > > not everyone wants a full rescan. We could add an option to do a
> > > full rescan when the modification date changes, to cover cases
> > > such as yours.
> >
> > This would be great. So I enable update timestamp if metadata changes
> > on all my users and digikam will automatically find these changes
> > right? (If I have enabled the option you mentioned above)
>
> Yes in theory, but this option does not yet exist ;-) I'll put it on my TODO
> list right now.

Great to read that!

Regards,


Milan Knizek
knizek (dot) confy (at) volny (dot) cz
http://www.milan-knizek.net - About linux and photography (Czech
language only)

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[Vlado Plaga]

Am Tue, 8 Jun 2010 17:57:55 +0200
schrieb Marcel Wiesweg <[hidden email]>:

> > At the moment I don't even know how to properly use digikam on two
> > different operating systems (Linux and Mac OS) with just one user (on
> > just one computer).

[...]

> For this (and other) reasons digikam normally stores collections by the
> partitions UUID. That means, if KDE Solid is properly implemented on Mac OS X
> - I dont know if it is - you should be able to use the same database file and
> photo directories, on a partition accessed by both OSs.
> Make backups and try...it works or not ;-)

For almost two months I have hardly been using digiKam at all, but
finally I managed to test this. Short version: it works indeed! :-)

Unfortunately the UUID scheme does not work on my system, under Mac OS,
but with some SQLite database software (I used the Firefox add-on
SQLite Manager[1] on Mac OS and sqlitebrowser[2] on Linux) I found out
I could just work with directory paths instead:

In the table "AlbumRoots" I changed "identifier" from the Linux
database's UUID version to

"volumeid:?path=%2Fdaten%2Fdigicam".

"specificPath" then has to be just "/".

My pictures were in "/daten/digicam" under Linux, and in
"/Volumes/daten/digicam" under Mac OS. I simply created a
symlink "/daten" to "/Volumes/daten" under Mac OS, and now I can share
the same "digikam4.db" on both systems! I created a hardlink with "ln"
for that purpose, but I suppose a softlink ("ln -s") would also do the
job...

I even deactivated all "write metadata to images" options, for this
makes digikam operate a lot smother on my old machine. Now I just need
to make sure I backup digikam4.db regularly...

Regards,
Vlado

[1] http://code.google.com/p/sqlite-manager/ 
[2] http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/


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