Photos on external hard drive

[john.carl...@googlemail.com]

I have a problem in that whenever I add the folder on my external USB
drive to Picasa (either watched folders or scan once), the next time I
start Picasa without the drive installed it forgets all the photos.
This means that when I add the drive back, I have to re-scan the whole
lot - which takes a long time.

How can I improve this behaviour?

[jigarshah]

Try Picasa3 on wine. Might work don't know. I haven't tried.

On Aug 31, 3:18 am, "john.carlylecla...@googlemail.com"

[orion]

On Aug 30, 6:18 pm, "john.carlylecla...@googlemail.com"
<john.carlylecla...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I have a problem in that whenever I add the folder on myexternalUSBdriveto Picasa (either watched folders or scan once), the next time I
> start Picasa without thedriveinstalled it forgets all the photos.
> This means that when I add thedriveback, I have to re-scan the whole

> lot - which takes a long time.
>
> How can I improve this behaviour?

I use a USB external hard drive to store my photos (and periodically
back them up to a home server using
rsync). My main concern was not to accidentally launch Picasa without
having the external drive plugged in (for the same reasons as yours
above)
so I added the following script right after "# Simple script to
launch Picasa" line in /usr/bin/picasa

# start check external drive mount
check_external_drive() {
if [ ! -d /media/photos/XYZ ]; then
zenity --error --text="XYZ external drive not
mounted!"
exit 1
fi
}
check_external_drive
# end check external drive mount

Here XYZ is a folder that I know exists on my external drive. Also, I
labeled my drive volume as "photos" so that it is mounted at the same
location ("/media/photos") every time. I am using Picasa 3 (with wine)
on Ubuntu 8.04.

Hope this is of use.

[john.carl...@googlemail.com]

On 4 Oct, 21:49, orion <sach...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 30, 6:18 pm, "john.carlylecla...@googlemail.com"
>
> <john.carlylecla...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I have a problem in that whenever I add the folder on myexternalUSBdriveto Picasa (either watched folders or scan once), the next time I
> > start Picasa without thedriveinstalled it forgets all the photos.
> > This means that when I add thedriveback, I have to re-scan the whole
> > lot - which takes a long time.
>
> > How can I improve this behaviour?
>
> I use a USB external hard drive to store my photos (and periodically
> back them up to a home server using
> rsync). My main concern was not to accidentally launch Picasa without
> having the external drive plugged in (for the same reasons as yours
> above)
> so I added the following script right after "# Simple script to
> launch Picasa" line in /usr/bin/picasa

[snip]

> Hope this is of use.

Neat workaround! Thanks. It would be nice if Picasa was better
behaved but this will avoid the problem for me.

[Brian Demers]

I did something similar with a kde dialog.


#! /bin/bash

# check if the mount is working
if [ -a /<picture_dir>/ ]
then
{
# run picasa
  echo starting picasa
  /opt/picasa/bin/picasa &
}
else
{
# if not prompt user
  echo not networked, you cannot start picasa
  kdialog --sorry "Sorry <Wife>,\nYou cannot open picasa unless\nyou are connected to the Network\n\nRight click on the icon in the bottom right corner."
}
fi

[mjpatey]

Orion, you are awesome! If this works, I will be using it all the
time. I've had the same problem for a couple of years, and there is
no way to prevent it-- outside of a script like this! Of course, the
Picasa team could add an option to retain the info when a drive is
unplugged, but that's a lot to hope for.

-Mark


)

[leiz]

Are you guys having this problem in Picasa 3? I tried it out on a
Ubuntu 8.04 machine, with a 512 MB thumb drive, and it worked for me.
When I unmounted it from /media/disk, Picasa no longer shows the
photos. When I mounted it to /media/disk again, Picasa instantly
remembered where the photos were.

Xvid Video (4.5 MB, 2 minutes)
http://leiz.org/picasa/external_drive.avi

[jigarshah]

Yes but does it rescan every time you plugin your drive ? Try
following usecase.
1. Create Album
2. Add some photos from folders.
3. Close picasa. Remove / unmount removable.
4. Start picasa. And see if albums are visible.
4. Close picasa and start again. Does it still show your albums ?
Close picasa.
5. mount drive again. And start picasa again. See if your albums are
still there.

On Oct 22, 2:23 am, leiz <zhang...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you guys having this problem in Picasa 3? I tried it out on a
> Ubuntu 8.04 machine, with a 512 MB thumb drive, and it worked for me.
> When I unmounted it from /media/disk, Picasa no longer shows the
> photos. When I mounted it to /media/disk again, Picasa instantly
> remembered where the photos were.
>

> Xvid Video (4.5 MB, 2 minutes)http://leiz.org/picasa/external_drive.avi

[leiz]

Ok, I did the following:

1. have the flash drive plugged in, mounted
2. start picasa, create an album: "foobar"
3. add photos from the flash drive to the foobar album (album contains
only photos from the flash drive)
4. close picasa, umount the flash drive
5. start picasa (the foobar album is there, with 0 photos)
6. close picasa, start again (the foobar album is there, with 0
photos)
7. close picasa.
8. mount flash drive, start picasa (the foobar album contains 3 photos
- happened instantly, didn't see the scanner thing come up)

Xvid Video (2.1 MB, 1 minutes)
http://leiz.org/picasa/external_drive2.avi

[leiz]

Ok folks, if you're having this problem, please answer this question:

With your external hard drive mounted, in the Tools -> Folder Manager
dialog, if you collapse all the folder listings in the left pane, does
it look like [A] or [B] ?

[A] http://leiz.org/picasa/folder_manager_1.png
[B] http://leiz.org/picasa/folder_manager_2.png

that is, if your external hard disk is mounted at /path/to/
mount_point, does /path/to/mount_point show up as an entry in the
folder manager, like /media/disk does in [B] ?

On Oct 22, 12:25 pm, leiz <zhang...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, I did the following:
>
> 1. have the flash drive plugged in, mounted
> 2. start picasa, create an album: "foobar"
> 3. add photos from the flash drive to the foobar album (album contains
> only photos from the flash drive)
> 4. close picasa, umount the flash drive
> 5. start picasa (the foobar album is there, with 0 photos)
> 6. close picasa, start again (the foobar album is there, with 0
> photos)
> 7. close picasa.
> 8. mount flash drive, start picasa (the foobar album contains 3 photos
> - happened instantly, didn't see the scanner thing come up)
>

> Xvid Video (2.1 MB, 1 minutes)http://leiz.org/picasa/external_drive2.avi

[leiz]

Doh, hit the wrong button. Let's try this again... I'd like to get
more info about your system so I can figure out why you're having this
problem.

Can you answer the question I posted here?
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Picasa-for-Linux/msg/be335d4887bc1515

Also, it would be great if you can:

1) Tell me where you mount your external hard drive
2) Send me the output from the "hal-device" command, when your
external hard drive is plugged it

[jigarshah]

Hi leiz,
It looks like [B].

My pen drive gets auto mounted as /media/disk-1/

On Oct 30, 3:28 am, leiz <zhang...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Doh, hit the wrong button. Let's try this again... I'd like to get
> more info about your system so I can figure out why you're having this
> problem.
>

> Can you answer the question I posted here?http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Picasa-for-Linux/msg/be335...

[jigarshah]

And it works with Picasa3 on wine. No probs at all. No deletion of
album. But i do see sometimes picasa rescanning photo album. Status is
'refreshing thumbnail' Not sure if its rescanning.

Thanks for your reply. Looks like you work for Google :)

[leiz]

If you get case [B], then you don't have this problem. I bet the
people reporting the problem have case [A].