[Digikam-users] command line tool to normalize exif orientation flag

[John Stumbles]

On 31/05/12 17:49, Remco Viëtor wrote:

> Also, to make the risks abundantly clear: anything that damages the file, will
> damage it for *all* locations, meaning that the original data is /lost/...
>
> So, for me, hard-links *cannot* be considered as backups, you'll have to use a
> real copy for that (that actually copies the data to another location).
>
> Hard links are very useful to give another 'view' on a collection of files,
> among other things, but please, please, do not even think of them as any form
> of 'back-up'... And we've seen in another thread that Digikam doesn't play
> nice with hard-linked files, either.
>
> Remco
>
> P.S. @John: this is not to attack you, but hard links are a slightly more
> advanced feature, and if someone thinks that they work as a backup, they could
> be in for a lot of grief...

I quite agree that a hard-linked tree copy is not a proper backup. Maybe 
I shouldn't even have used the word 'backup' where I did. Anyone who has 
a collection of photographs that matter to them and doesn't have proper 
backups is certain of grief sooner or later!

However the linked tree copy is very useful when one is doing all sorts 
of things with your directory structure, and many things that modify 
files (since most utilities that modify files do break hard links).

For example I've used it when I renamed all my photographs from their 
original dscn_1234.jpg type names to include date+time-stamps - a tree 
containing 10s of Gigabytes. It means that if your renaming command goes 
irretrievably wrong you save an enormous amount of time by simply 
deleting the messed-up tree and renaming the backup tree, rather than 
copying back all the files from your backup system.

So, agreed: linked-tree is not a substitute for a proper backup. But it 
is a useful tool.

-- 
John Stumbles                                    http://stumbles.org.uk
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