[digiKam-users] Question on multi user environment

[sse450]

Dear friends,

First of all, I would like to thank all the devs for such a really
really nice and sophisticated software. Finally, I was able to ditch LR.

I have just setup digikam with pictures and mysql database on a network
share. And imported 50K+ pictures to digikam. All work fine and fantastic.

I understand that digikam is not ready for the prime time of multi PCs.
Using just 1 PC at a time (among 1xLinux, 2xWin10 PCs) is also OK for me.

Is there a way to achieve this? Or what is the best practice to access
the same pictures through the comfort of digikam (tags, search etc.)
using multi PCs?

All the best

Le 25/02/2020 à 10:06, sse450 a écrit :

> Is there a way to achieve this? Or what is the best practice to access
> the same pictures through the comfort of digikam (tags, search etc.)
> using multi PCs?
>

I'm not sure and not familiar with DK under windows (I use openSUSE Linux)

but I guess the solution may be to have the same path to images and
database everywhere. This can probably be done in linux with links, on
Windows I don't know how

jdd
--
http://dodin.org

[Martin Burnicki-2]

[hidden email] wrote:

> Le 25/02/2020 à 10:06, sse450 a écrit :
>
>> Is there a way to achieve this? Or what is the best practice to access
>> the same pictures through the comfort of digikam (tags, search etc.)
>> using multi PCs?
>>
>
> I'm not sure and not familiar with DK under windows (I use openSUSE Linux)
>
> but I guess the solution may be to have the same path to images and
> database everywhere. This can probably be done in linux with links, on
> Windows I don't know how

At least since Windows 7 there is a mklink command, try 'mklink -?' in a
command line window (cmd.exe).

I have tried this once, some time ago, for a different application, and
it worked as expected. However, I've not tried this with DK on Windows
because I usually work under openSUSE Linux, too.

Martin

[woenx]

If you don't mind having a database for each user, the easiest way is to just
save the metadata into the pictures or xmp sidecars, and let digikam scan
for changes at each startup. That will work for everything except for
hierarchical face tags (so try to leave them under "People" and it will be
fine).

That way, changes a user makes will be visible the next time another user
starts digikam.



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Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

[Remco Viëtor]

On Tuesday, 25 February 2020 10:29:31 CET [hidden email] wrote:

> Le 25/02/2020 à 10:06, sse450 a écrit :
> > Is there a way to achieve this? Or what is the best practice to access
> > the same pictures through the comfort of digikam (tags, search etc.)
> > using multi PCs?
>
> I'm not sure and not familiar with DK under windows (I use openSUSE Linux)
>
> but I guess the solution may be to have the same path to images and
> database everywhere. This can probably be done in linux with links, on
> Windows I don't know how

OP said he had images and databases on a network share, so it's a matter of
mount points, not (symbolic) links. No idea how to set those up under windows,
though (and it will depend on how you access the network share).

Remco

P.S. If the databases are set up under an external MySQL server (as opposed to
the internal MySQL server in Digikam), the database access shouldn't be a
problem: point all PC's to the same server...

Le 25/02/2020 à 15:25, Remco Viëtor a écrit :

> OP said he had images and databases on a network share, so it's a matter of
> mount points, not (symbolic) links.

nope.

of course you need fixed mount points, but you can (?) have an identical
link to various mount points

I use a digikam folder with inside links to various collections. As long
as I keep the links, I can change the collection position

jdd


--
http://dodin.org

[Andrew Goodbody]

On 25/02/2020 09:06, sse450 wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> First of all, I would like to thank all the devs for such a really
> really nice and sophisticated software. Finally, I was able to ditch LR.
>
> I have just setup digikam with pictures and mysql database on a network
> share. And imported 50K+ pictures to digikam. All work fine and fantastic.
>
> I understand that digikam is not ready for the prime time of multi PCs.
> Using just 1 PC at a time (among 1xLinux, 2xWin10 PCs) is also OK for me.
>
> Is there a way to achieve this? Or what is the best practice to access
> the same pictures through the comfort of digikam (tags, search etc.)
> using multi PCs?

There is no really good answer to this but it can be achievable with
some effort.

First of all sqlite databases over a network are heavily discouraged as
it is very easy to corrupt them, so you need to use an external mysql
server for the database. Unfortunately mysql has not had the same level
of testing as sqlite. I believe that support has improved but I have no
idea how robust it is in reality, there are people using it so it should
be fairly OK, but it is still marked experimental. YMMV.

Secondly there is no way to make the mount point in Windows identical to
the mount point in Linux. Which is where the information in this bug may
come in use - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261277 - I am not
sure why it ever got closed as there still seems to be no GUI way to do
this :-(

Unfortunately you are still liable to the various computers arguing over
which locale is in use...

Andrew

[sse450]

On 25.02.2020 17:25, Remco Viëtor wrote:

> On Tuesday, 25 February 2020 10:29:31 CET [hidden email] wrote:
>> Le 25/02/2020 à 10:06, sse450 a écrit :
>>> Is there a way to achieve this? Or what is the best practice to access
>>> the same pictures through the comfort of digikam (tags, search etc.)
>>> using multi PCs?
>> I'm not sure and not familiar with DK under windows (I use openSUSE Linux)
>>
>> but I guess the solution may be to have the same path to images and
>> database everywhere. This can probably be done in linux with links, on
>> Windows I don't know how
> OP said he had images and databases on a network share, so it's a matter of
> mount points, not (symbolic) links. No idea how to set those up under windows,
> though (and it will depend on how you access the network share).
>
> Remco
>
> P.S. If the databases are set up under an external MySQL server (as opposed to
> the internal MySQL server in Digikam), the database access shouldn't be a
> problem: point all PC's to the same server...
>
>

Thank you all for helping me out. I am trying to find a solution while I
try to understand internals of digikam.

So, it seems the solution lies using the same exact path for Linux and
Windows computers.

Currently, the path of the collection for Windows is "Z:\". And, the
mount point at Linux is /home/user/Pictures/digikam.

On this front, either Windows should follow Linux link of mount, or
Linux should follow the mount link of Windows.

Martin's hint about MKLINK was spot on. As it seems, MKLINK is something
like we use "ln" in Linux. However, I couldn't find a way to remove the
drive letter and colon (which Linux has no idea about) from the path.

Creating a path similar to Windows on Linux seems easier to me.

Interestingly "ln -s /home/user/Pictures/digikam 'Z:'" creates a
wonderful link. "ls Z:" shows all the directories mounted. Now, the
question is as there is no any associated path with "Z:" in Linux, where
should I put "Z:" link so that digikam will be able to read it. "Z:
"should go to a directory which is readily readable by digikam during
starting. Can someone give me a hint about this issue?

If all above fails, I created a digikam docker which is accessible by
browser and vnc. So, all the user will access to the MySQL database and
pictures using one instance of digikam. Do the digikam devs see any
problem with this approach other than the import-export difficulties
which naturally exist in docker solutions?

All the best

[woenx]

There's also an option to indicate more than one path for the same
collection. That way, you can specify a linux and a windows path for each
picture folder in the database, and it will work on both places without
needing to use soft links or anything like that.

check this post:

http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digiKam-users-DigiKam-and-multiple-computers-best-practices-tp4705570p4705575.html

To do that, you have to edit the digikam4.db file using a sqlite editor and
change the value of the field that stores the path to the collection. I
don't think it's officially supported or anything, but I used it for a while
and I didn't have any problems.



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Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

[Rick Hallock]

I keep the picture folders on each machine local, and am using syncthing to synchronize the folder but not the database.  I keep set digikam so so everything is stored in pic. each database gets updated from the pics.  and I have a backup (wasted space but it works pretty well)

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 12:48 PM woenx <[hidden email]> wrote:

There's also an option to indicate more than one path for the same
collection. That way, you can specify a linux and a windows path for each
picture folder in the database, and it will work on both places without
needing to use soft links or anything like that.

check this post:

http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digiKam-users-DigiKam-and-multiple-computers-best-practices-tp4705570p4705575.html

To do that, you have to edit the digikam4.db file using a sqlite editor and
change the value of the field that stores the path to the collection. I
don't think it's officially supported or anything, but I used it for a while
and I didn't have any problems.



--
Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

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