[digiKam-users] Catalogues across the LAN

[Webreaper]

I'm having real problems with Digikam running on a catalogue that's sitting on my NAS. It seems like it's just not set up to run this way. 

I have 400k photos in a NAS share, and have done a full import (into an internal MySQL DB) which took over 2 days. I'd expect, at that point, to be able to browse, search and generally work with the catalogue efficiently when on my home network with direct access to the NAS. However, the startup time is abysmal (a few minutes before I get any GUI at all) and a lot of the time I just get white 'documents' when searching or browsing, rather than thumbnails. If I double-click one of the search results, I get the editor with a message saying Cannot load "". Why would this be? Is it because I've had Digikam open when I've left my LAN (i.e., had my laptop on at work), and so it's 'lost' the connection to the NAS shared folder, and doesn't ever restore it? If so, is there anything I can do to make it more resilient?

I've tried Digikam 5.9, 6.0 and 6.1, and with SQLLite, and with internal MySQL, and it just seems awfully slow and unwieldy. I was really hoping that I'd be able to switch to using it as a replacement for Lightroom, but so far the experience has made it unusable. Any tips to make it work in a slick manner?

[dplinker]

I've found that my startup time greatly improves if I set DigiKam to not scan for new items at startup (settings -> Configure Digikam.. in Miscellaneous).  The side-effect, of course, is that you have to manually re-scan.  My NAS has roughly 25k images.

Do you also get the "cannot load" error when you preview an image (right-click and select preview)?  I've never experienced this symptom with my setup.

I do have issues if I return to a DigiKam session that has been idle for several hours.  I use Linux automount for my photos mount, and that may have something to do with it; I've never diagnosed it, though, so I am just guessing.  This may be similar to your question about having DigiKam open when you disconnect from your LAN.

FWIW, Lightroom was my preferred tool until DigiKam added manual control over thumbnail sort order (thanks, DigiKam developers!).  I'm now using DigiKam most of the time.

Dean

On 2/26/19 5:12 PM, Mark Otway wrote:

I'm having real problems with Digikam running on a catalogue that's sitting on my NAS. It seems like it's just not set up to run this way. 

I have 400k photos in a NAS share, and have done a full import (into an internal MySQL DB) which took over 2 days. I'd expect, at that point, to be able to browse, search and generally work with the catalogue efficiently when on my home network with direct access to the NAS. However, the startup time is abysmal (a few minutes before I get any GUI at all) and a lot of the time I just get white 'documents' when searching or browsing, rather than thumbnails. If I double-click one of the search results, I get the editor with a message saying Cannot load "". Why would this be? Is it because I've had Digikam open when I've left my LAN (i.e., had my laptop on at work), and so it's 'lost' the connection to the NAS shared folder, and doesn't ever restore it? If so, is there anything I can do to make it more resilient?

I've tried Digikam 5.9, 6.0 and 6.1, and with SQLLite, and with internal MySQL, and it just seems awfully slow and unwieldy. I was really hoping that I'd be able to switch to using it as a replacement for Lightroom, but so far the experience has made it unusable. Any tips to make it work in a slick manner?

[Matthieu]

Hi there

I encountered a lost of performances issues in a similar configuration.

My analyse highlight 3 reasons:

- In 5.9, the MySQL query log file shows that we had a lot of duplicates queries and MySQL was not able to handle it. It has been improved in the 6 beta release. I invite you to back up your database (there are some database structure upgrades) and upgrade to the 6 release. You should see a difference.

- MySQL default configuration: customize the MySQL configuration helped me to earn some hours when browsing my (smaller) collection of files. Unfortunately, it depends on your configuration and your files.

- Network performances: old wifi hot spots can provide poor network performances, and using a network share protocol with cache could help you to improve your performances. Do you use NFS share rather than CIFS? Which kind of Wifi do you have? ac?

Now it takes me only a few minutes to analyse on startup my collection of 50k pictures.

Hope it can help.

Le ven. 1 mars 2019 à 03:29, Dean Jagels <[hidden email]> a écrit :

I've found that my startup time greatly improves if I set DigiKam to not scan for new items at startup (settings -> Configure Digikam.. in Miscellaneous).  The side-effect, of course, is that you have to manually re-scan.  My NAS has roughly 25k images.

Do you also get the "cannot load" error when you preview an image (right-click and select preview)?  I've never experienced this symptom with my setup.

I do have issues if I return to a DigiKam session that has been idle for several hours.  I use Linux automount for my photos mount, and that may have something to do with it; I've never diagnosed it, though, so I am just guessing.  This may be similar to your question about having DigiKam open when you disconnect from your LAN.

FWIW, Lightroom was my preferred tool until DigiKam added manual control over thumbnail sort order (thanks, DigiKam developers!).  I'm now using DigiKam most of the time.

Dean

On 2/26/19 5:12 PM, Mark Otway wrote:

I'm having real problems with Digikam running on a catalogue that's sitting on my NAS. It seems like it's just not set up to run this way. 

I have 400k photos in a NAS share, and have done a full import (into an internal MySQL DB) which took over 2 days. I'd expect, at that point, to be able to browse, search and generally work with the catalogue efficiently when on my home network with direct access to the NAS. However, the startup time is abysmal (a few minutes before I get any GUI at all) and a lot of the time I just get white 'documents' when searching or browsing, rather than thumbnails. If I double-click one of the search results, I get the editor with a message saying Cannot load "". Why would this be? Is it because I've had Digikam open when I've left my LAN (i.e., had my laptop on at work), and so it's 'lost' the connection to the NAS shared folder, and doesn't ever restore it? If so, is there anything I can do to make it more resilient?

I've tried Digikam 5.9, 6.0 and 6.1, and with SQLLite, and with internal MySQL, and it just seems awfully slow and unwieldy. I was really hoping that I'd be able to switch to using it as a replacement for Lightroom, but so far the experience has made it unusable. Any tips to make it work in a slick manner?

[Webreaper]

I've only run v6, I've even tried 6.1. I have a fast NAS, and use AC WiFi. Still see the same issues, even after multiple scans. I may just have to stick with Lightroom, I suppose. 

On Wed, 6 Mar 2019, 22:01 Matthieu, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi there

I encountered a lost of performances issues in a similar configuration.

My analyse highlight 3 reasons:

- In 5.9, the MySQL query log file shows that we had a lot of duplicates queries and MySQL was not able to handle it. It has been improved in the 6 beta release. I invite you to back up your database (there are some database structure upgrades) and upgrade to the 6 release. You should see a difference.

- MySQL default configuration: customize the MySQL configuration helped me to earn some hours when browsing my (smaller) collection of files. Unfortunately, it depends on your configuration and your files.

- Network performances: old wifi hot spots can provide poor network performances, and using a network share protocol with cache could help you to improve your performances. Do you use NFS share rather than CIFS? Which kind of Wifi do you have? ac?

Now it takes me only a few minutes to analyse on startup my collection of 50k pictures.

Hope it can help.

Le ven. 1 mars 2019 à 03:29, Dean Jagels <[hidden email]> a écrit :

I've found that my startup time greatly improves if I set DigiKam to not scan for new items at startup (settings -> Configure Digikam.. in Miscellaneous).  The side-effect, of course, is that you have to manually re-scan.  My NAS has roughly 25k images.

Do you also get the "cannot load" error when you preview an image (right-click and select preview)?  I've never experienced this symptom with my setup.

I do have issues if I return to a DigiKam session that has been idle for several hours.  I use Linux automount for my photos mount, and that may have something to do with it; I've never diagnosed it, though, so I am just guessing.  This may be similar to your question about having DigiKam open when you disconnect from your LAN.

FWIW, Lightroom was my preferred tool until DigiKam added manual control over thumbnail sort order (thanks, DigiKam developers!).  I'm now using DigiKam most of the time.

Dean

On 2/26/19 5:12 PM, Mark Otway wrote:

I'm having real problems with Digikam running on a catalogue that's sitting on my NAS. It seems like it's just not set up to run this way. 

I have 400k photos in a NAS share, and have done a full import (into an internal MySQL DB) which took over 2 days. I'd expect, at that point, to be able to browse, search and generally work with the catalogue efficiently when on my home network with direct access to the NAS. However, the startup time is abysmal (a few minutes before I get any GUI at all) and a lot of the time I just get white 'documents' when searching or browsing, rather than thumbnails. If I double-click one of the search results, I get the editor with a message saying Cannot load "". Why would this be? Is it because I've had Digikam open when I've left my LAN (i.e., had my laptop on at work), and so it's 'lost' the connection to the NAS shared folder, and doesn't ever restore it? If so, is there anything I can do to make it more resilient?

I've tried Digikam 5.9, 6.0 and 6.1, and with SQLLite, and with internal MySQL, and it just seems awfully slow and unwieldy. I was really hoping that I'd be able to switch to using it as a replacement for Lightroom, but so far the experience has made it unusable. Any tips to make it work in a slick manner?