[Digikam-users] How do I set up Digikam for network access by multiple users ?

[Brano]

On 09/16/2009 01:46 PM, Linuxguy123 wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-09-16 at 13:33 -0400, Brano wrote:
>    
>> On 09/16/2009 12:42 PM, Linuxguy123 wrote:
>>      
>>> On Wed, 2009-09-16 at 18:15 +0200, Marcel Wiesweg wrote:
>>>
>>>        
>>>>>>> I've read digikam having a development version using mysql instead
>>>>>>> sqlite, so sooner or later we'll have multiuser environment.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>                
>>>>>> Thanks for sharing that.   I'm going go hold off on setting up my multi
>>>>>> user system until that ships.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>              
>>>>> You may be waiting a long time ...better review with dev team what's in
>>>>> developement and due dates.
>>>>> Mysql support does not imply multi user access management will be
>>>>> implemented day one (if at all).
>>>>>
>>>>>            
>>>> MySQL support is on our schedule for the coding sprint this October/November.
>>>> Multi-user support, concurrent access, including locking or conflic
>>>> resolution, is a more difficult story.
>>>>
>>>>          
>>> Speaking from experience, its really easy to handle multi user access...
>>> create 2 access types.  First one is RW, second one is read only.  The
>>> first person to log into the db gets RW.  All others are read only.
>>> Tell the user what connection they have when they log in.  If they don't
>>> like what they get, they can log out and kick off the person who has RW
>>> access.
>>>
>>> It will work for 80% of the users needs.  Most people (me) just want to
>>> be able to put the pictures and db on a networked drive and be able to
>>> access it from a variety of computers.  Having concurrent editing access
>>> for multiple users would be nice to have, but just having remote access
>>> would be a good start, even if only one person has rw privileges.
>>>
>>> The team could implement concurrent multi user editing access at a later
>>> date.
>>>
>>> I also like the idea of having a read only user permission because I
>>> don't want everyone being able to edit the pictures and tags, especially
>>> deleting raw files or jpegs if there is only one of them.  I would like
>>> to see DigiKam use a trash setup (either from the OS or within itself)
>>> for this very reason.
>>>
>>> Imagine having 20,000 tagged images and a user who doesn't understand
>>> things removes a couple tags from the tag list when they meant to remove
>>> them from a few pictures.   Hours and hours of work is lost in 30
>>> seconds. :shudder:
>>>
>>>
>>>        
>> Well, no offense, but how about daily backups? It's not that other users
>> can screw up your collection, you can as easily do a wrong click and
>> have things gone for good. Not speaking of very possible HDD failure.
>> Disks are so cheap today, photos are priceless, invest to a secondary
>> HDD and do some kind of rsync daily.
>> (I personally have all my valuables (photos) on RAID-5 disks rsyncing to
>> backup disk daily)
>>      
> An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  That is why Unix OSes
> have file and directory permissions.
>
> And when might I figure out that this error happened and how much time
> might have elapsed between when it happens and when I figure it out and
> how much work might have been done in that time.
>    
There are different levels of scuring data, various levels of owner's 
paranoia and countless solutions ;) ...pick what is right for you in 
your scenario. But do not underestimate your enemy ;) i.e. disks are 
spinning and will fail when you leas expect it, users make errors when 
least expected ...and so on ;)