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

[Johan Kemnitz]

Casey, I'm running DK off a single shared DB hosted in MariaDB; files are
on the same server (essentially a NAS) hosting the DB. 90% of the time
clients access via ethernet, it's noticeably slower but still quick enough
over 5GHz WiFi. I used the article you linked as a guide, it definitely
turned out to be less complicated than it initially appeared to be.

I went this route since I wanted multiple clients to be able to access the
same collections, tags, ratings etc. It works reasonably well but there are
limitations:

- right now there does not seem to be a way to also add each client's local
files. If you add client 1's local directories, that will populate to all
the other clients via the shared DK database, and client 2 will look for
the same files in the same locations and run into an error. Last I tried
this half of the NAS collections' folders disappeared from DK.

- there's no great way to work with DK while offline / away from the local
network. This is OK for my purposes right now. There are workarounds: VPN
(to at least talk to the database, though likely slow) or syncing DBs
across clients. Believe latter involves running a SQL server locally on
each client and setting them up to sync with a "primary" DB via replication
<https://mariadb.com/kb/en/standard-replication/>, on the to-do list.

- Browsing / previews slow down a lot if there are a lot of images (>300)
in a folder. Getting around this with sub-folders.

The NAS / shared DB setup is OS-agnostic but not being able to add local
files is a big limitation. Guessing that could be implemented in a way
similar to the local thumbs DB added with 7.4.0 (and enough of us begging
the devs ;) ). If there is a way to do it that I've missed I'd love to know.

The sync'ed DB / shared physical drive is probably more flexible and
responsive, but has its own limitations (only one client can work off the
drive at a time & you have to bring it with you...). As long as your sync
tool is OS-independent that should work too.

Good luck!

On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 4:22 PM Travis Kelley <rhatguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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