[digiKam-users] Client/Server: Indexing possible on server?

[Remco Viëtor]

On vendredi 14 août 2020 23:09:47 CEST Lukas Haase wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am using digiKam on Windows and I am accessing pictures from an SMB share
> over OpenVPN and the internet. There are throusands of pictures and many
> GBs of them. Loading them conventionally will take me years.
> 
> Is it possible to run a command on the server to index a directory and merge
> the data somehow with my database on the Windows client?
> 
> (Ideally I could even automate this so as to run the indexing automatically
> via cron job on the server, sync the data to my client and merge them via a
> script).
> 
> Thanks,
> Peter
As woenx said, you'd run into trouble with the file paths.

Also, if loading them conventionally is going to take years, you won't be too 
happy with most operations once you do get them all loaded in the database:
any operation that needs to transfer image files or sidecars over a network 
will be a lot slower than similar exchanges on a local disk. Adding the route 
through the VPN isn't going to help any as well.

For information, a collection of about 500 GB on a *local* disk runs without 
noticable delays once read into the database. Even rsyncing this to a NAS on 
my LAN takes overnight, though...

About the only option I can think of is installing Digikam on the remote 
server, and use something like Teamviewer to access the server to use digikam. 
Clunky to say the least, and only possible if you have full access to the 
server, and the server runs a graphical interface (not a given).

But just installing MySQL on the remote server isn't going to help: the work 
will still be done on your local machine, which means the images still have to 
transfer over the network. And in addition, the database info will have to 
travel the network...