Docker Container on Unraid: Is the media actually copied to /ps/library?

[arretx]

Every time I get involved in improving my photo organization I end up in turmoil. Perhaps this solution will work well.

Current Setup

Unraid, 24TB, with a share called “Media” that contains approximately 30,000 photos and videos on a 10G connection to my MacBook in various folders.

I have been using Lightroom Classic to organize, tag, edit, etc., but since Lightroom Classic doesn’t allow shared databases, I’m the only user in the house who can benefit from the organization, tags, etc.

Lightroom is picky about outside intervention of media files that it references and I still want to be able to use it without media being flagged as edited outside of Lightroom.

The default share created in Unraid is /mnt/user/Photos. If I drop a media file in that folder, it shows up there, but also in /ps/library in the docker container’s console.

• Is this a symlink or a mounted share?
• Is the actual data being stored in the container?
• Does PS make a copy of the media if I give it a folder to scan, or does it just index the files where they are?
• Does PS write any data to the media files, or is this optional?

[mrm]

@arretx

Every time I get involved in improving my photo organization I end up in turmoil. Perhaps this solution will work well.

Well, I certainly hope PhotoStructure works for you!

@arretx

Lightroom is picky about outside intervention of media files that it references and I still want to be able to use it without media being flagged as edited outside of Lightroom.

If you want PhotoStructure to not touch your Lightroom catalog you can set up the PhotoStructure docker container to bind-mount with read-only permissions.

Assuming your LR catalog is in /mnt/user/Photos, in docker compose format it would look like this:

  volumes:
    - /mnt/user/Photos:/photos:ro

(the “ro” is the readonly bit).

@arretx

Is this a symlink or a mounted share?

It’s a mounted share (unless I’m misunderstanding the situation or question).

@arretx

Is the actual data being stored in the container?

You never want to store data in a docker container, as the contents get deleted if you upgrade to a new docker image, and the container performance can drop if “too much” gets written to the container overlay. It’s why the docker and docker-compose recipes include several bind-mounts: so PhotoStructure never writes to a directory that will disappear when the container is torn down.

@arretx

Does PS make a copy of the media if I give it a folder to scan, or does it just index the files where they are?

It can do either, and depends on your settings page: see PhotoStructure | Automatic library organization for details.

@arretx

Does PS write any data to the media files, or is this optional?

Version 1.1 can either write metadata changes to sidecars, or to the original image, based on the writeMetadataToSidecarsIfImage, writeMetadataToSidecarsIfVideo, and writeMetadataToSidecarsIfSidecarExists settings.

Set these all to false if you despise sidecars. Set these to true to write to sidecars.

I know all this flexibility can be a bit much: if you tell me what you’d like, I’m happy to figure out how you should configure your settings.

[arretx]

Great info! Thanks!

[tkohhh]

Sorry I missed this when you posted a few days ago, and hopefully you’re all sorted out now. But just for some extra reading that may help clarify the directories in a docker install, check out this post: Debugging on Unraid - #7 by tkohhh

Also, this topic has my recommended setup for Unraid: Tkohhh’s recommended Unraid setup