Running both a Linux and Windows versions of Digikam

Software digiKam
1

Greetings,

Currently, I have a Digikam running on an Elementary OS v7.1 (Ubuntu v22.04 variant) using MySQL internal.

Is it possible to run a copy of Digikam on a Windows 10 box and use the same database? Resilio Sync synchronizes local folders on my various boxes. Yes, I realize that only one instance of Digikam should be running at a time, lest really bad things occur.

If not, is there a method to migrate the database to a Windows version?

Thank you

2

The issue is the difference in path naming between linux and Windows.
So using the same database with both is probably not possible.

I’ve no idea if you can migrate the database to Windows, but what is possible is to write sidecar files, and scan your collections to create a new database on Windows. But that’s not something you want to do regularly (as it can be very time-consuming).

And of course, you will have to ensure synchronisation between the different installations. And tell digikam to scan for new/changed items on startup (can also be rather slow, although it is a background process: as you also want to pick up changed items, you can’t use the “fast scan” option.)

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3

Thank you.

4

I believe it is possible to use the same database, but you need to do some fiddling to set up the paths in the DB (if I remember correctly). But, at least back when I tried (several years ago), you will likely get some complaints about wrong character encodings when switching OS.

5

Those can be avoided if you stick to old conventions for file and path names (as an extreme, no spaces, and only ASCII characters). But that would mean Windows is still not using UTF-8?

6

It’s been several years now, but I seem to remember that it was the database encoding that depended on the OS. A bit silly to not normalise encoding in the DB, but maybe that has been fixed since.

Pretty sure it still uses some bastard version of UTF-16.

7

I regularly use the same database on Mint and Windows 10. The only change I had to make was changing the disk names to match the operating system I’m using. However, I find the Windows version much slower.

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8

My work laptop running Windows 11 is still rocking Code Page 1152 for a lot of things :grimacing:

9

I literally just did this to switch between docker on Unraid to Windows and vice versa. Assuming the pics are at a single location of either pc, nas, or whatever.

Create a backup of the original files first.

Did you create a backup of the original files?

The files i needed to modify were digikam4.db and thumbnails-digikam.db.
Setup:

docker: mapped to /pics/
windows: mapped to U:/
U: should be mapped exactly the same as /pics/

/pics/folder1/etc/ → U:/folder1/etc/
/pics/folder2/etc/ → U:/folder2/etc/

digikam4.db
AlbumRoots - identifier, casesensitivity

UPDATE AlbumRoots
SET identifier = REPLACE(identifier, 'ORIGINAL_FILE_PATH', 'NEW_FILE_PATH')
EXAMPLE: REPLACE(identifier, 'volumeid:?path=/pics/', 'volumeid:?path=U:/')

as far as i know casesensitivity changes from 2 to 1. (docker to windows)

thumbnails-digikam.db
CustomIdentifiers, FilePaths

Update CustomIdentifiers
SET identifier = REPLACE(identifier, 'detail:///pics/', 'detail:///U:/')

Update FilePaths
SET path= REPLACE(path, '/pics/', 'U:/')

make sure that there are 3 /// in customidentifiers.

I’m sure someone smarter than me can make a better sql command that’s a bit safer but that worked for me.

10

There is absolutely no need or benefit to manipulating the AlbumRoot, since we now also use a file UUID parameter. Additional paths can be appended to an existing network path on other operating systems. This allows different base paths to be used for the collection on different operating systems. This can be easily configured in the digiKam settings under “Collections”.

11

Instead of migrating the database to my Windows box, I just started fresh.

It prolly took a little longer, but it works fine.

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