Merging or migrating user data across cloud storage

warrenao

I'm running the latest Daz (4.8.x) on MacOSX 10.10.x, though I'm not certain if that's relevant to the question; still, it's a data point.

On my main desktop (Mini 2012, i7, 16 GB, SSD/rotational fusion, no NVIDIA) I've been hacking away with Daz for a while. Not so long that I've got TB's of renders, but enough that I don't necesarily want to just delete everything and reinstall. When I installed it a couple years ago, I had only the desktop machine and no thought of multi-computer work, so I accepted all the defaults for Daz, DIM, etc. Recently, though, I've begun using Daz a lot more, and file transference has become a concern.

See, I also have a portable (Air 2014, i7, 8 GB, SSD, also no NVIDIA, alas), and installed Daz onto that one earlier in the week - setting it up so the runtimes and user libraries were all loading from a dedicated folder in my cloud storage (Dropbox). My Bright Idea was that I could render on the desktop machine, while at the same time modeling on the portable, which has less overall oomph and thus is not ideal for rendering, but would still let me work while the desktop machine grinds away.

I do know there are some decent hacks out there for batch rendering outside of Daz; and if all I wanted to do was keep working on one machine, that would be a great solution. The other aspect, though, is what the cloud offers: I'd like to have my work available to me wherever I am, even if I'm on the road somewhere, by cloud storage.

My trouble is that the desktop (original) Daz install is basically a legacy install; while it seems to work okay reading the contents of the cloud-installed files (runtime, user lib, etc), I've found the porting isn't perfect. For instance I've saved out several subscenes on the desktop machine, which appear to be visible on the cloud volume, but the portable machine (with the new install) does not see those subscenes; they don't show up in the 'unassigned' area of the smart content pane.

I have a hunch I need to either export something from the desktop (legacy) install, or merge things somehow - and while I've done research on the topic of migrating Daz from one machine to another, I think what I'm wanting to do is a little different from the notes and information I've found.

Essentiially I'd like to have two separate installs sharing the same resources in a networked folder, with the catch that one of those installs is legacy and the other is new.

So … what are my options for exporting or merging the content of the legacy install into the new install, so everyone is working from the same page, so to speak?

FWIW, the actual amount of rendering I've done comprises maybe a few dozen files, so if the best way to do this involves a backup of my various development documents, along with my third-party models, followed by a reinstall of Daz on the legacy machine so it can work with the new architecture in the cloud folder … well, I can live with that. I'm just wondering if there's another way to do it - one that doesn't involve destruction of user content - that I simply am overlooking. If it's just a question of, say, reassigning the Daz CMS cache to the cloud folder, instead of its default in /Library/*, I'm totally okay with doing that.

warrenao

Ha … okay, well, never mind; I figured it out myself. Largely it was a question of teaching the Daz legacy install where the shared runtime and resource folders wre located. After that, it seems to have learned on its own.

I was able to removed the legacy Daz 3d user folder from my main HD, after that, and have had smooth sailing so far going back and forth form machine to machine. Now I can render on one and keep modeling on the other.

warrenao

One hitch. When I download and install something from DAZ using the 3DIM installer on a given machine, it seems that the other machine must also have the same content DL'ed and installed, before it can recognize it in its Smart Content pane — even though both installs are looking at the same shared resources folder.

This doesn't seem to be the case with anything accessed through the Content Library tab. Only the Smart Content. I'm guessing there's something local per machine tht's written or updated, likely hidden away in a user parameter file buried deep in one of the OS's subfolders, which points DAZ to the smart content … in a way that doesn't matter to the regular content library manager.

Given the way this is working out, though, and that one minor hitch aside, I don't see why new installs can't be done directly to a cloud storage system, so myriad multiplae machines could all be working from the same content library. (One for modeling, others for rendering…) You just don't want to open the same files for editing at the same time on two different computers.

fixmypcmike

Is the CMS database also set up as a shared resource?

warrenao

Fixmypcmike said:

Is the CMS database also set up as a shared resource?

I'm not entirely certain where the CMS database is actually located on OSX. So my hunch is that the answer is 'no'. :\ There's an install manager JSON file in the cloud older, but that's the closest thing to a registration of file paths I can see with a cursory look.

What is the CMS database engine used by Daz 4.8? Is it Postgre SQL or somehting else?

fixmypcmike

PostgreSQL, unless you had the older Valentina version and didn't install PostgreSQL CMS.  The location of the database can be found in Preferences > CMS.  I'm not a database expert, however, so I don't know if there's anything special you need to do -- I'll let our Mac database expert know so he can advise you if necessary.

warrenao

I did indeed begin with Valentina, I believe. The legacy machine is not in my immediate area at the moment, so I'll have to poke around a little later and see what turns up.

Thanks very much for following up with this.

Totte

I have a three machine setup basically, and I do not use a shared CMS  (as it will require that the content has the exact same paths on all systems) or shared content (due to the remote disk OS X bug describle below), but I download to a shadered volume on my network, so I only download once, then install with DIM on all three machines (two MacPros, mostly used and a MacBookPro, which I only use while I'm off to the cottage).

I know you do as you do using a mounted volume for the content, but be aware of the problems with dropped disk connections and the hated My Disk_1 problem, that will cause DS and DIM not to find the volume even though it looks OK in Finder, as finder cheats. Look at /Volumes and there you have the real device path name.

 

warrenao

Interesting. It hadn't occurred to me at all that I could try running Daz without any sort of CMS.

What I'm doing is using cloud storage (something analogous to Dropbox called Sync), so there's no shared volume involved; the path to that folder is absolute across all machines (i.e., /users/warren/sync/DAZ/*). So that would tend to lend itself to a unified CMS approach, wouldn't it?

fixmypcmike

You  may want to ask Kendall Sears, I know he uses a unified CMS.