Can I use an “On My Mac” folder located on a network volume?

Yes, we have tested this and we find it generally works well.

TLDR: Only use Radiccio on one Mac at a time, and you should be good.

But also, consider reading the following:

• We recommend connecting to the network volume in Finder first, and allowing Finder to save the username and password to the Keychain. If you do, Radiccio should be able to automatically reconnect to it again later.
• If your Mac has gone to sleep while Radiccio was open, sometimes it may be necessary to quit and reopen Radiccio so that it can connect to the network volume again.
• Librarian is designed to be used by one user at a time, not by multiple users at the same time. If multiple users will access the same source, we recommend turning off Librarian. When Librarian is disabled, Radiccio does not make any changes to the files in the source folder, so this should pose no problems.
• It is safe to access the same Librarian database from multiple different Macs, but we recommend only using one Mac at a time.
• When using the same Librarian database with multiple Macs, please make sure that only one of the Macs is allowed to scan. Trying to scan with multiple Macs at the same time is likely to cause severe slow-downs, and possible error messages.
  • In Settings, you can set all of the Macs (except one of them) to “Manually” scan. When set to “Manually”, as long as you never manually initiate a scan, a scan will never occur on that Mac.
• Keep in mind that even with scanning turned off, if Librarian is enabled, Radiccio will still write to the Librarian database when you do things like pin/unpin, favorite/unfavorite, etc. If multiple Macs are trying to simultaneously write to the database at the same time, this could result in slow performance, or error messages.
• Multiple simultaneous reads are generally not a problem, as long as your network server can keep up.
• Scanning on network volumes takes much longer than scanning on an internal SSD (roughly 10 times longer, in our testing; for example, a 2 minute scan may become 20 minutes). Keep this in mind when deciding how often you want to scan.
• Librarian uses SQLite3 which is highly resilient to access from multiple different processes; in other words, your data will most likely remain safe even if you do not follow the above instructions to the letter. At worst, simultaneous access from multiple Macs is only likely to cause you some short-term annoyance in terms of much slower performance, and database locking errors (which will go away after the other Mac releases the lock, or can be fixed manually). We are offering the above advice to help you get the best possible experience.
• Nothing in technology is ever certain to work, and adding more complexity adds more potential points of failure. As with any data that is important to you, you should have a backup strategy. Backups are beyond the scope of our advice.

Can I use an “On My Mac” folder located in a cloud sync folder?

Yes, however we strongly recommend that you disable Librarian when using a source stored in a cloud sync folder.

Attempting to use Librarian with cloud sync services is likely to result in conflicts (i.e., the cloud sync service asks you which version of a file to keep and which to discard) and we will not be able to help you resolve these conflicts. This could also result in the database becoming locked, which would prevent Radiccio from functioning normally (until you manually unlock it).

It is perfectly safe to use a cloud sync folder with Librarian disabled. In this mode, Radiccio does not make any changes to your files.

I have a database locking error. How can I manually unlock it?

Follow these steps:

1. Quit Radiccio on all of your Macs
2. Open Radiccio on one Mac only, and check to see if the error is gone. If so, you’re all set and do not need to proceed further.

To reduce the occurrence of this error, avoid using Radiccio on more than one Mac at the same time.

Make sure only one Mac is set to scan automatically; the others should be set to scan manually.

If the error persists:

1. Quit Radiccio on all of your Macs
2. Make a backup copy of your Librarian.radicciodb file (important!)
3. Control-click on the file and select “Show Package Contents”
4. Find the file database-v1.sqlite3-wal and move it to the Trash. Do not empty the Trash yet! Make sure you trashed the …-wal file only.
5. Start Radiccio on one Mac only, and verify that the source is working normally

It should now be safe to empty the Trash. However, please remember that it is important to keep regular backups of your Librarian.radicciodb file, as you would any other important data.

If your database was locked as a result of using a cloud sync folder, please remember that we do not support using Librarian with cloud sync services (see above section), and this is likely to continue being a problem as long as you use it in this unsupported way.