[digiKam-users] Question on multi user environment

[sse450]

On 25.02.2020 17:25, Remco Viëtor wrote:
> On Tuesday, 25 February 2020 10:29:31 CET jdd at dodin.org 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