[digiKam-users] Organizing photos on multiple Digikam installations and with NAS

[Travis Kelley]

I do something similar.  I have a large USB-3 SSD that I have my entire
picture collection sync'd to using Nextcloud.  I store my "golden" copies
of my images on my nextcloud server.  My digikam sqllite databases are
stored on the USB3 SSD also.  If I need to move to another computer, I just
take the USB SSD with me.  That handles the database movement and the gives
me fast local access to everything.  All metadata is stored in the
pictures, so if anything happens to the USB SSD, I just need to get a new
one and let everything re-sync to it through nextcloud.

The one drawback to this system that I can think of is that its not truely
concurrent multi-user.  I can move the USB SSD to any computer I want...but
only 1 computer can access the SSD at a time.

One final hint...don't let nextcloud sync the sqlite database.  It ends up
syncing way to frequently (every time a change is made) and either creates
to much load, or fills up your nextcloud instance.  I figure I can easily
rebuild the digikam db if I loose it since the metadata is in the pictures
anyway.  You can also try pausing nextcloud while you're working in
digikam, then unpause it once your done.  That way you can still sync your
digikam DB for backup purposes or if you just want to, but avoid the
constant syncing if you leave nextcloud running while you work in digikam.

On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 2:58 PM irthomasthomas at gmail.com <
irthomasthomas at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, I haven't tried a fully networked system like this yet, but I do
> switch between desktop and laptop. For my small needs I just copy the
> SQLite database from one machine to the other (and to my backup drives).
> Is it a multi-user system, or do you just want to be able to switch
> computers? If it just yourself hopping seats then that is easier. SQLite is
> actually a more capable multi-user DB than most people give it credit. It
> should be able to handle your four users, fine. Digikam say it is
> recommended for collections only upto 100k, and I must confess I am not
> close to this yet, but there is a wide spectrum of computer power today,
> and I bet a decent desktop would be able to handle a lot more than that.
> The bottle neck here is probably disk/transfer speed. So use NVME SSD if
> possible for a big collection, and use something like rsync to copy from
> the network share to your local disk and back.
>
> I don't use a NAS, I prefer to use an USB3 multi-disk caddy and share it
> over the network. It does the same thing but gives me USB3 speed on the
> main machine and a lot more flexibility.
>
> It is fine to add collections from an external drive or network share, it
> is only the sqlite database itself that should not be accessed like that,
> unless maybe over ethernet. Wifi is waaay slower than a local disk. Even
> so, working on files over the network will be a bit slower. I prefer to
> copy the collection I am working on to the local disk, and later sync or
> copy it back to the external drives when I'm done. But I do still access
> collections on the external drive, and it is fine for short tasks. The main
> thing is that the SQLite file is on your local SSD, then it should be
> usable.
>
> I think you would only need consider MySql/MariaDB if you need a proper
> multi-USER system.
>
> Good luck!
>
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 at 18:44, Casey Finnerty <casfindad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I could use some help on setting up Digikam to use on multiple computers.
>> I would like the best solution to accommodate the following parameters:
>>
>>    - I'd like to use Digikam to organize and edit photos contained on
>>    local hard drives on a Mac, Windows, and two Linux computers I use. Some of
>>    these computers are laptops that are used occasionally where there is no
>>    internet available, so local management is essential.
>>    - I would also like to use Digikam to organize and edit photos
>>    contained on a NAS drive also. I have not yet purchased one, but I am
>>    looking at purchasing a Synology Diskstation soon.
>>
>> In the past, I haved used Digikam on multiple computers to access local
>> and remote collections, but I maintained separate databases on each
>> computer. I made sure to write metadata to each image, both jpeg and raw
>> files. (Just how experimental is the latter, btw?). If data was written to
>> photos on shared hard drives, I would rescan the directories with updated
>> photos to update the local Digikam database.
>>
>> I would prefer to maintain a single Digikam database that I could share
>> across computers/installations. Is this possible? What would be the best
>> way to set this up?
>>
>> I saw this article
>> <https://scribblesandsnaps.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/use-digikam-with-a-nas-and-mariadb/>
>> about migrating the Digikam database to MariaDB on a NAS, but the process
>> looks complicated and comments suggest it slows down performance
>> noticeably. Also, this would not work for those installations where I
>> sometimes work offline.
>>
>> I saw this video <https://youtu.be/LRDaj7rP2_E>, where Nigel Danson is
>> keeping his photos on a NAS, but he keeps his Lightroom thumbnail database
>> on an external SSD that he can move from one computer to another, so he can
>> work on his photos from multiple computers. This would seem to be an ideal
>> solution for me, yet, in the Digikam manual, I read "For performance and
>> technical reasons, you cannot use removable media.
>> <https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/digikam-doc/digikam/using-setup.html>"
>> Is this still true for the latest versions of Digikam?
>>
>> If so, I would then appreciate hearing an alternative solution. Thanks.
>> --
>> Casey M. Finnerty, Ph. D., MB(ASCP)
>> Winona, MN
>> USA
>>
>
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