I am trying to improve my Lightroom workflow by better managing my networked volumes using autofs.
Setup:
Macbook pro OSX 10.8.4
Lightroom 5 (cc)
Macpro OSX 10.6 serving >80000 images over AFP to the MacBook Pro.
One single catalog.
Old Workflow.
Start lightroom
The Folders Panel shows:
Macintosh HD as online with all my local images (~2000)
Volume Steve as offline with images from my MacPro (~80000)
To work with the offline images, I need to go to finder, and reconnect to the macpro and check the mount point name is correct (this can change if I have connected to other computers with the same username). Then the folders panel shows the disk Steve as online and the images are editable. This is OK, but needs repeating every time I connect to my home network.
New Workflow (in progress).
Use autofs ( which has been in Mac OSX for some time )
In this case, network volumes are mounted automatically when accessed.
BUT there are issues when the volume or network is offline - there is a considerable slowdown in Lightroom as it repeatedly tries to access the offline images. I am testing a number of settings, but have not yet found an optimal setup.
/etc/autofs_master
#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master # Use directory service
/net -hosts -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home auto_home -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers -fstab
/- -static
/Volumes/Resources auto_mount -bg,intr,hard,retrans=1,retry=0
/etc/auto_mount_tl
PicVault -fstype=afp afp://steve:password@macpro/Users/steve
Here,
autofs takes over control of folder /Volumes/Resources and creates a directory in it called PicVault
In finder this folder is shown as a disk icon (bare hard disk) when offline or a volume icon (disk in enclosure) when online. If I click on the offline icon it will be bought online.
However, in Lightroom the folders panel shows the volume as ALWAYS online, the subfolder is either correct or shown as missing.
Before I spend too much more time on this, I'd like to know if anyone has succeeded in getting autofs to play nice with lightroom ?
How I'd like to see things:
Lightroom recognises that autofs is managing a volume and that it checks to see IF the volume can be mounted and then puts it online, otherwise it carries on with the disk offline. As I use the laptop in many locations, these disks are only available from home.
regards
Steve Groom