[digiKam-users] Advice on Digikam (multi-client) setup

[hermanS]

Dear all,

I have been reading this list for a while now. Time to ask a few
questions myself.

I've been using Digikam for a few years. My requirements are not that
big. I need to be able to catalog, asses, rate and export my pictures.
All jpeg for now. I do my rating using the the 5-star system. Mostly
for determining which pictures to send to the print-shop (export). My
wife loves old fashioned photo-books. As the database grows larger
(56.000 pictures and counting) more advanced functions (date,
similarity and recognotion) are highly appreciated.

Situation:
A large collection (55k+) jpegs sits on Synology NAS. Shared network
drive on the family home PC with local installation of Digikam. Works
fine. Not extremely fast, but usable.
I also use photostation/DS Photo (synology) for file upload and quick browing.

What I need:
I need multiple Digikam-clients to be able to access the same files
and share the metadata. I spent days this summer trying to find the
optimal setup (use until now this was mostly occasional), but haven't
found it.

I migrated to a database on my NAS, using MariaDB, but that setup was
not fast enough to be workable.  Maybe now I upgraded router and
swiches this has improved, but the second problem was that every
change in setup ended in a very slow proces of many hours "rescanning"
the database.

So I need some advice on the optimal setup:

- would it be necessary/advisable to split large collection in
multiple collections?
- Can MariaDB on a NAS (Synology DS218play) be fast enough?
- would it be possible to store catalogs on Onedrive, dropbox or
synology drive and then use multiple clients (just not simultaneously)
as if they were part of a local single client setup?
- For performance-reasons, where to store matadata: In the file, in
xmp sidecar-files of in the catalog? Or…
- How can the ratings (5-star-system) be shared with Synology Photostation?
- Should I add the network drive as  local collection ("Z:\photos\" or
network share "\\Diskstation\photo's")
- Any other considerations when accessing files on a network share (SMB/CIFS)?
- Any other suggestions for not ending in endless "rescanning of
database" on startup?

Thanks in advance,
HermanS

[woenx]

Hey, I don't think digikam is thought to be used in a multi-user scenario,
but I found that the easiest solution is to keep a local database for each
user/device, and share only the picture library in a NAS. That way, it is
not as fast as having the library in your computer, but it's still
reasonably fast, and you avoid some problems that may arise when two or more
users try to access a shared database at the same time.

Basically, in the Settings/Metadata options, check the last two options:
Rescan file when files are modified, and Clean up the metadata from the
database when rescan files. And in Settings/Miscellaneous, check the options
to Scan new items on Startup, and remove obsolete core database objects.

In order for that to work, of course, you should save the metadata in the
picture files or in sidecar files, not only in digikams database. Now,
everytime you start digikam, it will spend a few minutes trying to detect
changes in the library, adding new pictures, and removing missing ones. But
I have been using this method for quite a while now, and it works reasonably
well. I use SQLite database, but I have not tried others.



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