SOLVED: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

astinusofmetate
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SOLVED: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby astinusofmetate » Fri May 05, 2017 10:32 am

Now that I have some photos uploaded to my Pictures network share, I'm trying to figure out a good way to share those pictures across devices in a neat and tidy fashion.

In my mind, the ideal scenario is the client side viewer would have the option to group the photos in the Pictures share by pre-existing image metadata (i.e. tags) as the folder layout might be disjointed due to the fact that I'm using it as a dumping ground for all camera devices.

I figured I have 2 main way so to accomplish this intent: (1) set up a DLNA server and use a DLNA client to view the files or (2) set up a web based photo gallery that could be viewed by any device with access to a web browser

I previously dabbled in setting up a photo gallery on my purchased web storage space using Piwigo and was fairly happy with the flexibility so I thought I'd first give that a go with my HDA.

The first snag I ran into is that it appears that Piwigo for Amahi doesn't have the built-in capability to point to pre-existing folders/pictures already on the same server. It acts just like the web server in that it wants me to upload photos to the Piwigo specific folders (which hardly makes sense because then I'll have 2 independent copies of the same information).

Parallel to that I tried playing around with a few DLNA compatible client apps (on an old iPad 2) after setting up the Serviio for Amahi DLNA app. Good news is that it was fairly painless to get the server to show the data on the iPad and the DLNA protocol does create some photo grouping based on timestamps. The bad news is that I can't figure out a way to sort by photo tags.There is a DLNA specific "play list" album but I get the impression that doesn't auto-populate information.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious about how I can set this up fairly easily. Any suggestions? Should I look at a different photo gallery web app? Can I point Piwigo to my network shares. I assume this would mean I will need to mount the share locally, but what needs to happen on the Piwigo side of things to see that share?

astinusofmetate
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:13 pm

Re: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby astinusofmetate » Fri May 05, 2017 12:42 pm

Just came across this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/com ... ng_photos/


I think if I can put a symbolic link in the piwigo /galleries/ directory that points to the Pictures share, I might be on the right track. Maybe. I presume I should create a local mount and link to that?

(Is there a downside to creating local mounts?)

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bigfoot65
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Re: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby bigfoot65 » Fri May 05, 2017 1:21 pm

ßîgƒσστ65
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astinusofmetate
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:13 pm

Re: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby astinusofmetate » Fri May 05, 2017 10:23 pm

Thanks for the link. I got scared once I read that it calls for working with Perl (yet another programming language I don't know how to deal with..) so I spent some time digging around the Piwigo forums this evening and it looks like the recurring recommendation over there is to create a symlink.

Given the fact that I'm using Greyhole to manage my shares, I'm not sure if I should point the link to /var/hda/files/pictures or create a local mount and then point towards /mnt/blahblahblah.

What do you suggest?

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bigfoot65
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Re: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby bigfoot65 » Sat May 06, 2017 6:57 pm

Given the fact that I'm using Greyhole to manage my shares, I'm not sure if I should point the link to /var/hda/files/pictures or create a local mount and then point towards /mnt/blahblahblah.
I would say /var/hda/pictures as uploads would be done using Samba.

Since photo info is stored in the database, I presume you have a plan for getting existing photos added.
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My HDA: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz on MSI board, 16GB RAM, 1TBx1+2TBx2+4TBx2

astinusofmetate
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:13 pm

Re: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby astinusofmetate » Mon May 08, 2017 5:26 am

It worked! I created a symlink to the shares folder inside the galleries directory and then, within the Adminstrator tools, I ran the synchronize function. Bam! Photos now show up in Piwigo.

Next step is to implement search/organize by tag (which I think is a plugin option).

Note to others: for this to work, all file names and directories relevant to Piwigo photos must not have oddball characters or spaces.

If you are using Windows and need to rename a bunch of files to remove spaces (and replace with "_") you can run the following at the command prompt within that same folder:

cmd /e:on /v:on /c "for %f in ("* *.*") do (set "n=%~nxf" & set "n=!n: =_!" & ren "%~ff" "!n!" )"

There's a way to somehow do this with folders as well but I couldn't get that to work right so I renamed those manually.

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bigfoot65
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Re: Photo Gallery for Network Shares?

Postby bigfoot65 » Mon May 08, 2017 6:21 am

Great news.

Maybe it would be worth adding a wiki page for the app. Would you be willing to do it? Then anything you learn can be passed on to other #Amahi users.

Will mark this as solved.
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