[Digikam-users] Syncing Digikam collections and databases between different computers

Jonathan Ballet jon at multani.info
Thu Dec 4 22:04:31 GMT 2014


Hi Jürgen,

I'm currently testing the fix I was talking in a previous mail (see
http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/digikam-users/2014-December/020408.html),
I'll let you know how it goes :)

 Jonathan

On Thu, Dec 04, 2014 at 10:31:24AM +0100, Jürgen Blumenschein wrote:
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> Hi Jonathan,
> 
> that's exactly my problem!
> How can I avoid this extra and unnessaccary scanning of all folders?
> Is there any switch or other way to get an fast starting digikam?
> 
> Jürgen Blumenschein
> 
> Am 03.12.2014 um 21:37 schrieb Jonathan Ballet:
> > Just to be clear: when I synchronize my photos and databases
> > between my computers, I get the same dialog as you mentionned,
> > and I don't lose any pictures or other information in the
> > process.
> > 
> > 
> > Still. One of the computer is a netbook and is, to be honnest,
> > kind of slow. Each time I get this dialog and I confirm the UUID
> > change, it seems it's rescanning all the folder of my
> > collections, and scanning 30GB+ on this computer takes more than
> > 15 minutes in this case.
> > 
> > Now, if I was doing this once in a while, I wouldn't really
> > complain, but I'd like to also have these pictures on my desktop
> > computer, which is a bit faster (just a bit, because it still
> > takes ages to work on these pictures), so I regularly synchronize
> > both computers. It works fine all the time, but I have to wait
> > for Digikam to fully start before being able to work comfortably
> > (and you now, IO activity...), although I have the *exact same
> > Digikam settings (files, databases, photos)* on both computers.
> > 
> > So, there's no dysfunction in itself. Digikam only seems to do
> > extra work because it detects the UUID changed, although there
> > is, in my opinion, no need to do anything (in my case case. I
> > understand there can be other use cases I didn't consider).
> > 
> > Jonathan (still pondering the problem)
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 10:51:45AM +0100, Gilles Caulier wrote:
> >> I remember an experience few month ago, where i moved my whole 
> >> collection from a 25Gb SDD to a new 512Gb SDD on my host linux 
> >> computer.
> >> 
> >> I simply move all dirs and restarted digiKam. Immediately, it
> >> detect the changes about HDD unit (it do not found older SSD
> >> and detect new one) and a dialog ask to see if new device with
> >> new UUID is the right one.
> >> 
> >> Note that both units (older and newer) have been mounted on the
> >> same path.
> >> 
> >> Typically, if this detection work fine everywhere, there is no
> >> need to have an advanced edit mode from Collection config
> >> dialog.
> >> 
> >> Note that hardware device is delegate to KDE::Solid API.
> >> Perhaps the dysfunction appear in this component.
> >> 
> >> Gilles Caulier
> >> 
> >> 2014-12-03 10:37 GMT+01:00 Jonathan Ballet <jon at multani.info>:
> >>> Hi Andrew,
> >>> 
> >>> On Mon, Dec 01, 2014 at 10:57:35PM +0000, Andrew Goodbody
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Please look at the bug here
> >>>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261277 It contains
> >>>> information about updating the albumroot entry and you can
> >>>> even have multiple values for accessing the same files from
> >>>> different systems, in comment #13. Unfortunately there is
> >>>> still no GUI frontend to edit this in a user friendly
> >>>> manner.
> >>> 
> >>> when I first read the report, I didn't see the relation with
> >>> my problem, but then I stumbled upon comment #20 (which
> >>> should have been the one you wanted to talk about, I
> >>> suppose?) and replaced the entry in the database from:
> >>> 
> >>> sqlite> SELECT id, identifier, specificPath FROM AlbumRoots; 
> >>> id    identifier
> >>> specificPath ----
> >>> ---------------------------------------------------
> >>> ------------------ 1
> >>> volumeid:?uuid=bd411a98-5c98-4370-89ee-551f180b09c1
> >>> /jon/images/photos
> >>> 
> >>> ... to the following:
> >>> 
> >>> sqlite> SELECT id, identifier, specificPath FROM AlbumRoots; 
> >>> id    identifier                              specificPath 
> >>> ----  --------------------------------------  ------------ 1
> >>> volumeid:?path=/home/jon/images/photos  /
> >>> 
> >>> which seems to work as I wanted this to work in the first
> >>> place.
> >>> 
> >>> I don't know what's the logic behind the 'identifier' field,
> >>> I have I think a much simpler use-case than what it seems to
> >>> be intended for, but at least storing the path of the
> >>> collection makes more sense to me.
> >>> 
> >>>> Still however I think a better solution would be to have
> >>>> the albumroot information stored in the digikamrc file and
> >>>> only have the relative paths in the database.
> >>> 
> >>> I like the idea of having the collections and all their data 
> >>> self-contained. But I completely understand that might be a
> >>> problem when moving folders around between different machines
> >>> with different folder structures... Indeed having the album
> >>> root configuration stored in a different place would have
> >>> also probably helped me in this case...
> >>> 
> >>> Jonathan
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>>> Andrew
> >>>> 
> >>>> On 01/12/14 20:25, Mick Sulley wrote:
> >>>>> Yes agreed!  I think it should be possible to arrange a
> >>>>> SQLite script to auto run to change the UUID back to what
> >>>>> it expects, but I have not tried it.  I cannot really see
> >>>>> why the UUID is in that record at all, the path is there
> >>>>> and that should be sufficient I would have thought.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> If you do come up with a way to automatically sort it out
> >>>>> please share.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Mick
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> On 01/12/14 20:07, Jonathan Ballet wrote:
> >>>>>> Hi Mick,
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> thanks for your reply!
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 06:54:10PM +0000, Mick Sulley
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Hi Jonathan,
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Yes I raised this when I started using DigiKam, as
> >>>>>>> far as I know there is no proper fix.  If you just
> >>>>>>> accept at the message it works OK, just takes a 
> >>>>>>> little time.  It is also possible to add a database
> >>>>>>> script to fix it, here is an answer that I received
> >>>>>>> to that question back in 2013.  I never got around to
> >>>>>>> creating the script, I just accept when asked.
> >>>>>> I would be OK just to accept this, but my laptop is not
> >>>>>> *that* powerful and it takes ages just to rescan all
> >>>>>> the images, even if nothing changes.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> I'm going to try such a script, as you mentioned,
> >>>>>> although it's going to be, at best, impracticable.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> I actually wonder what is the purpose of this UUID. If
> >>>>>> I choose to store the content of Digikam's database
> >>>>>> into MySQL, is this also stored? I supposed that using
> >>>>>> a remote database server was to allow sharing between
> >>>>>> several computers, but if it's stored, that more or
> >>>>>> less defeats the purpose of having a remote database,
> >>>>>> isn't it? And if this UUID is not stored, then I wonder
> >>>>>> what it is using SQLite?
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> Hum, I guess I'll need to have a look...
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> Jonathan
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> On Wed, 20 Feb 2013, Mick Sulley wrote:
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> Hi,
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> When I sync my album between laptop and desktop I
> >>>>>>>> get a message when I open it on the destination
> >>>>>>>> machine saying that the collection is available but
> >>>>>>>> the identifier has changed.
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> I have looked in the database on each machine and
> >>>>>>>> it seems that the problem is that the AlbumRoots
> >>>>>>>> table is slightly different, the identifier field
> >>>>>>>> is different - desktop =
> >>>>>>>> "volumeid:?uuid=bf835257-ad63-4580-9692-9d2600740cd1"
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> 
> laptop = "volumeid:?uuid=2a6a238c-c404-46b6-886f-873683917b9c"
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> It does seem to be OK if I just accept the message
> >>>>>>>> and continue, but is there any way to stop it
> >>>>>>>> happening?  Is it likely to cause any problems?
> >>>>>>> Hi Mick,
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Well, this is an old issue, often discussed on this
> >>>>>>> list. Identifying disk devices by UUID, instead of
> >>>>>>> mount pathname as it should be - at least on Unix
> >>>>>>> platforms - makes the database hardware dependant.
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Same problem occurs if you manage your collections on
> >>>>>>> USB drives, even on the same machine. Changing a
> >>>>>>> drive by a backup drive, or replacing an old drive by
> >>>>>>> a new one with a mirror copy of collections will also
> >>>>>>> change the physical device UUID.
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> The (dirty) fix to work around sync problems is to
> >>>>>>> use small scripts to make the transfert, e.g. using
> >>>>>>> rsync, then update the database from SQL command line
> >>>>>>> tool and issue things like that : UPDATE albumroots
> >>>>>>> SET identifier = 'volumeid:?uuid= new UUID' WHERE
> >>>>>>> identifier = 'volumeid:?uuid = old UUID';
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Jean-François
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ 
> >>>>>>> Digikam-users mailing list Digikam-users at kde.org 
> >>>>>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________ 
> >>>>>> Digikam-users mailing list Digikam-users at kde.org 
> >>>>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> _______________________________________________ 
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> >>>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
> >>>>> 
> >>>> _______________________________________________ 
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> 
> 
> - -- 
> Jürgen Blumenschein, eMail: blumenschein at dokom.net
> Homepage: http://huntington-info.eu/
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