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12/03/2008 11:58:50 AM · #1 |
Has anyone tried the workaround of subst: a virtual local drive for a shared network drive in which you have your Lightroom catalog stored?
This way you can install lightroom on your desktop and laptop and not have to go through the pain of export/import catalogs.
I've read though that since Adobe didn't code the app to handle concurrent users and the danger of slow network hiccups that they disabled using a network drive for your catalog as it would more likely become corrupt.
Any experience with this?
My plan is to configure LR to do a catalog backup upon startup on the Laptop so in the even of a failure I will only lose stuff from that session.
I'm not sure why they didn't just make all of the catalog database updates transactional so if there are any problems it just gets rolled back. I would think that would prevent corruption.
Maybe SQLite just sucks and doesn't support that.
bleh! |
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12/03/2008 12:09:01 PM · #2 |
| Have not tried with the catalogue BUT there are somewhere close to 10.4 trillion files in that catalogue (I refuse to call it a database), so I think if it works it will be unworkable due to the network overhead of the underlying individual files... Unless you can force a cache in the VD but I don't believe windoze is that clever with those things. A RAM drive might help LR speed though :-) |
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12/03/2008 12:24:18 PM · #3 |
I don't understand why LR isn't network friendly either. It's a great pro tool, and EVERY pro I know has a network of some kind so this makes no sense to me at all.
Even if they offered 2 versions that might be a good compromise to keep the price down. This is about the only program I know that is so stupid about networks. Well, speaking of programs written in this century.
With their concept of one catalog for everything they have to know it's gonna get huge. They market it to pros. I got 4 computers on my network that I use and I basically have to pick one and work on it in LR as a catalog can't be shared across the network. That also means more exporting of JPGs and actually less use of LR by me.
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12/03/2008 02:01:00 PM · #4 |
I don't have an easy solution for this, but I'll weigh in a few points...
For the purpose of what the "catalog" really is, it's just one file. The preview cache, which LR stores along side the catalog, is made up of many, many files -- but depending on how important you consider those files to be, they can be discarded, since LR will regenerate them (at a performance impact, of course). If you store metadata in XMP sidecars, the actual catalog may not be of great use to you -- but recall that some "meta-metadata" ;) is not stored in sidecars, such as virtual copies.
So, in some multi-client workflow, you may not even need to transfer and/or keep a catalog in sync.
That being said, the technicals of LR's handling of multiple clients using the same catalog is very very very very very very very very dumb. They get cool-points for storing it in an SQL database, but minus several thousand cool-points for completely abandoning any sort of client-server connectivity. It's a freaking SQL database -- what's the use of an SQL db when you can't connect multiple clients to it? I digress........
I have everything "virtual" to some degree in my setup, as I run my Winblows stuff under Linux... but I have to admit I've never successfully fooled LR into using a network-based filesystem. Hardware/OS virtualization aside, LR is very "smart" about figuring out where your target catalog actually lives (i.e. you can mock up all sorts of network-drives, symbolic/shortcut links, etc... LR still figures out it's hitting the network to your catalog, and it will dump you out with an error message). I'm sure one could run an actual virtual machine ON a network filesystem, so the "local" disk to the virtual machine is actually networked, but the entire machine would run so slowly (and still wouldn't allow you to actually share the catalog, which would be the entire point of having it networked in the first place), it would be a waste of time to make an academic point.
It *is* possible to move your preview cache with a symbolic link (Winblows "shortcut"), so that you can put pretty-much anywhere (including ramdisk, or even a network drive.... not that you'd want to DO that...), but the catalog itself cannot be easily coaxed onto a non-local-disk device.
My recommendation (and personal practice) when sharing a catalog across multiple computers (i.e. laptop and desktop... or virtual machines...whatever...) is to copy or move the catalog file around between whichever "active" machine you wish to consider is the current catalog-holder. This of course is a serial process, and has absolutely no provisions for concurrency.
Maybe LR 3 will support an actual client-server db. Or at least concurrent access to a catalog. Ha. I won't hold my breath.
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12/03/2008 03:01:31 PM · #5 |
It has been done (at least with v1.4).
Here is the post I first came across that explains how to do it.
//www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c0536be?14
The instructions are towards the bottom so I copied them here.
Open Notepad and write the following:
@echo off
IF EXIST P:\ GOTO LR
SUBST P: \\NetworkDrive\FolderWithCatalog
:LR
Start "" "C:\Programas\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.4\lightroom.exe"
cls
Save this as "LightRoom.bat" and replace this with your standard LR shortcut.
I plan on trying it when I find some time, maybe over the weekend.
It's important to make sure you back up your catalog before trying this.
If anyone tries it please report back to this thread. |
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12/03/2008 06:02:29 PM · #6 |
Yup, that will work. Just tested it myself with LR 2.1. Looks like the subst presentation of the network drive fools LR. Trouble now is I can't get LR to follow any shortcut or symlink/junction back from the network drive to a local device to keep the preview cache local.
So, if you want to keep the catalog and preview cache on network storage, this will work. If you want to keep the preview cache local, you'll have to do some more trickery, but I've run out of time to play today... Anyone else have any luck?
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12/03/2008 06:55:23 PM · #7 |
This has my vote as the Geekiest thread ever on DPC. I basically can't understand a word of it. I love it!
R.
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