ReadyNas Photos

[jpickell]

After getting over the learning curve, I love the product and am excited about the prospect of finally being able to use it to share tools effectively.

I am confused by this: "Please make sure you have a Pictures folder in your media share. This is there by default on installation, but if you’ve deleted the share or folder, you’ll need to recreate it."

I have a Pictures folder but this is not where I keep my pictures. I keep my 20,000+ photos in a tree structure by date and topic under a share called photos. What's the need for the Media share?

[jchappo]

standard uPnP thing, always a share called media, with three folders for music, movies, and photos.

[yoh-dah]

I have a Pictures folder but this is not where I keep my pictures. I keep my 20,000+ photos in a tree structure by date and topic under a share called photos. What's the need for the Media share?

No worries. ReadyNAS Photos will use the Pictures folder to keep the imported photos.

[jpickell]

Seems like I have this working; however, it's making copies of photos already on my NAS in the share. Isn't there a way to simply allow access to all pictures already in a folders on my NAS, e.g., Wave Photos Feb 2008?

[jpickell]

Anyone? Would love to be able to access all my photos on my ReadyNAS (20K+) using the same add-on without uploading each album one at a time. That would be incredible. Is it possible?

[yoh-dah]

Anyone? Would love to be able to access all my photos on my ReadyNAS (20K+) using the same add-on without uploading each album one at a time. That would be incredible. Is it possible?

You'll need to import the albums for now so that your photos can be resized for viewing.

[frejac]

So, as the photos are shared through your server, for how long are they out there?
How do I remove them, if I decide I would want to?

I was thinking about making about 10 albums and them publish the links on my website.

Thanks

[jpickell]

It's just like any online sharing service. They are out there as long as you want them to be. You can delete the albums at any time. They are on your server. There's no "auto-delete" function.

[frejac]

"They are on your server"

No they aren't. They are on the readynas photo site.

/Fredrik

edit: I revisited an album previously published, got this error:
"500 Server closed connection without sending any data back"

[jpickell]

Are you sure? I had my photos on my ReadyNAS and "imported them." It looked to me like they were imported into my Media share under Photos. That was the whole purpose of this chain, e.g., why do I need to store these photos on my ReadyNAS in two locations. The response I got was that they were resized and put in my media share. Assuming you are right, then if I delete them on the Media share, they should still be online. Is that correct?

[jpickell]

If they are on the ReadyNAS server, why does it say this on the readyNAS homepage:

"Ever wanted to share your photos straight from your home instead of having to copy your files somewhere remote?"

[smartwombat]

As I understand it, this is not a normal photo sharing system.

The central ReadyNAS photos server does not hold the images.
I think it holds a database of where the images are, and who is allowed to see them.
So that people request access from their server, but it then redirects the image requests to your NAS.

My guess is the Desktop application loads the images into the database on your NAS resizing them for the thumbnail display and the large size, and also communicates with the central server to say where the album is.

Then when you share it, a link is made between the album images (in your database) and the people who they are shared with. Whether that is in you local database/application on the NAS or in the central server, I'm not sure. My guess is that it's in the central server.


If you want a "normal" photo gallery, then you can use a HTML gallery creator (I use Lightroom) and copy the resulting mini-website on to a HTML share on your NAS.
But that requires you to open up your network to the outside world and run the NAS as a HTTP server. If you have a router you can firewall the rest of your network and pass all HTTP requests to your NAS so that the other computers are still protected.

But as I understand the ReadyNAS photos system, it works without that setup and without your PC turned on - just accessing the NAS directly.

[jpickell]

Hi Paul,

I use Lightroom for managing my photos. I was excited when I read about ReadyNAS photos but it seems to be reinventing the wheel. I already have albums, some I want to share, in lightroom. Can you tell me more about how you accomplished what you described or point me to a step-by-step instructional? I'm getting more sophisticated with my ReadyNAS but I keep running into walls (like now for example when my RNPhotos had been uploaded but for some reason can no longer be seen).

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

-jim

[smartwombat]

Do you have a broadband always-on connection to the internet?
Do you have a router/firewall that can forward incoming requests to specific addresses?
Do you have a DHCP server, or fixed internal IP addresses ?
Can you see my test gallery ?

Phew ! Lots of questions I know.
I think that what I've done is the easy way, really.
0) my cable internet modem is connectged to the router/firewall input
0) the router is connected to the 2G hub that hosts the 3 NAS and my PC
1) My router is the firewall and DHCP server
2) I configured that to give fixed 192.168.1.x addresses to the 3 house NAS
3) I configured incoming HTTP to be forwarded to the third NAS
4) I setup DynDNS with my public IP address to smartwombat.myphotos.cc
5) I setup the NAS in the simplest way I could, with no login security
a) enable http service
b) redirect default web access to "gallery" share
c) login authentication for share Disabled
d) gallery share setup for CIFS (so I can copy files to it) and HTTP
HTTP settings, default access: Read-Only
No hosts allowed access
No WebDAV support

I've also configured rsync for backups, but that doesn't affect the web access.