Hi. Sorry for the vague title. Nowadays I’m using multiple computers and get to need files and such from other machines pretty often. My music and photos library has also increased and it’s getting much harder to maintain with it being scattered across many machines. Basically I’m trying to have a photo library and plain files(documents, music, etc) shared across computers.
For plain files I’m thinking nfs+samba would be the best approach, but there are problems. They have speed issues, but as I can’t afford large space for all my machines I can’t keep a full rsync’d local copies everywhere too.
The photos are my bigger concern, as I’m looking for a tagging feature. A plain directory structure would be easy to sync but those tags would differ by programs… desktop programs like digikam or xnview(sadly proprietary) would work well if I didn’t need syncing, but I’m not sure if they’d work reliably with all their configs/files stored over nfs. Plus, these programs would have incompatibilities by platform and not work at all on android.
Web based solutions like Immich or NextCloud Photos appear to be pretty famous nowadays, but I’m not sure about them as well. They seem to be overkill for my purpose, and those mostly tend to be very new & i’m not too sure about their future, as they store tags and such on their own formats.
Edit: Oops, forgot to say. I have multiple servers right now, one offsite running FreeBSD, another running Devuan, and one at home running FreeBSD.
I’d love to hear how others are maintaining their system. Thanks for reading.
I would honestly consolidate your media and start storing it on a NAS, then have everything sync to the main shares on the NAS.
I wish lol. I don’t have a dedicated(?) hardware, just multiple laptops in various locations. They’ve ran pretty stable for the last few years of 24/7 use though. I’m thinking having some files synced to local would be enough backup, compared to none i have now (aside from few manual work).
So use syncthing on all your devices. It will let you selectively sync folders.
syncthing is great.
Seems like Syncthing is loved by many :) Not too sure how much it’d differ from rsync scripts, but I’ll give it a try. Thanks!
As far as photo librabry, you can compare the different solutions at https://github.com/meichthys/foss_photo_libraries
Thanks. I’ve actually already seen it, but it wasn’t enough as it only listed web hosted solutions and I found most of them lacking for my needs. Thankfully others’ comments below are pretty inspiring :)
I don’t see why you think those are web based, usually people run this at home but glad you find what you are looking for
By web based I mean they’re not a native desktop program and such.
I use Nextcloud and Immich and would recommend both. Immich might be a bit overkill, but it’s also well maintained, feature-rich and has a large community. It’s super easy to set up and works great.
Thanks for replying. Is there a reason you use Immich over NextCloud’s NextCloud Photos? Also I’ve occasionally heard NextCloud is pretty slow, is it okay for you? You’re using their official client program to sync files?
Nextcloud Photos performs okay, but the interface is very ‘meh’. Plus, the mobile client’s sync is a little unstable. On iOS, there’s no background sync at all.
Just curious, but is there anything that provides background sync on iOS except iCloud?
Immich has image and facial recognition by default and a very neat Android app. Also it’s running in my home server, which has more power if Immich needs it. In that case I’d say software should serve one purpose and serve that good. Immich is just for picture management and does that very good. Nextcloud is a cloud and the Photos app is just a small extra that can’t compete with a full-fledged software. Nextcloud runs fine on my Raspberry Pi 4, but it’s only used by me and three friends. It’s mainly limited by your network speed and disk speed I’d say. And I’m using an external hard drive without issues.
I see. The lack of a desktop client seems to be Immich’s biggest con. I guess NextCloud wouldn’t be the best choice here. Thanks for replying.
What is the cost associated with Immich? I keep hearing about it, but I still don’t know how that really works I guess
What’s costs do you mean? It’s free and open source.
I use Syncthing and a bunch of rsync scripts to keep my machines in sync. The stuff I want synced continuously is handled by Syncthing. Other stuff is synced on a daily basis using the rsync scripts and anachron. For Photos, I use PhotoPrism. I simply sync the Photos from my smartphone to a folder and make PhotoPrism scan it on a regular basis using ofelia. For cameras, I need to copy the photos manually, but I don’t think there’s a way around that.
Seems like I’ll be going on a setup pretty similar to this. Thanks!
Maybe I have just had back luck but syncing my files across all of my devices has always burned me at some point. No matter what software I have used I have overwritten something by accident or I try and delete something and it doesnt get deleted on all device. Or get a bunch of conflicting files and now i need to figure out what file I want etc…
I do use some syncing but it is mostly between only two devices. Often times it is only a 1 way sync. For example photos on my phone get synced to my NAS automatically.
For me keeping all of my files in one place is the way to go. I just have everything on a NAS. (TrueNAS) All of my devices connect to that and i just edit them directly over the network.
I have a VPN for remote access.
I use digikam with sidecar files on my main photo editing PC.
We sync this directory with a media server on the local network that enables all of the local devices to access the photos and tags. In theory, it means we could run digikam on another device as well, and sync data between them via updates to the sidecar files, but in practice, we don’t do this and the media server is effectively read only.
Then, we sync the media server images with a photoprism instance that we have running on external hosting. Photoprism recognises the keywords and sidecar data from digikam, which lets me search and access the images from anywhere.
That’s great, I never knew Photoprism can detect and work with digikam’s sidecar files. Thanks for sharing.
