I have an old inventory list on an Excel spreadsheet. Haven’t bothered to manage forever, so I decided to start over. I’m mostly concerned having a reliable/accessible way for family to ascertain value of that inventory should I pass unexpectedly.
I prefer network storage over a local machine, and didn’t want it in a cloud I didn’t own the physical hardware.
At minimum, they just need to know how to access the VM from a local OS, or connect to it using the VM manager on the Synology NAS GUI, both of which are straightforward for them.
After trying a handful of open source solutions to store inventory on a local Network Attached Storage, I found a way for JE to work for me.
Currently running a Synology DS930+ with 8GB of RAM. I have Docker running a container for Calibre (eBooks). I attempted work my way through the Docker documentation to get JE to run in a Java container, then link it to the derby database in a separate container, but that setup requires knowledge I don’t have right now to assess if that’s possible.
But, this approach appears promising so far:
- Running a LinuxLite OS using the Synology VM manager, dedicated to JE.
- Made a script to auto run JE at boot.
- Made the VM accessible via VNC.
- VM has access to shared folders in the NAS
The VM is accessible on macOS, Windows using TightVNC, and Linux via VNC. Local screen sharing - horay.
Synology has an iOS app, DS Photo, that may work really well with this set up.
- I can photograph my inventory.
- Uploaded specific photos to a shared folder on the NAS using DS Photo.
- Access the shared folder on the VM to copy the photos to the VM, so I can link it to the db in JE.
I‘m going to fill in some inventory and run a report to see how it all works out.
Eventually, I’d like to keep an encrypted/password protected static copy of that report on OneNote, or something like that.
Just sharing my enjoyment from the process until I can play with the new CP version.
My plan for the upgrade is export data (in the form of a spreadsheet) from JE and import to CP. If need be, I can write a separate database program that reads from one and writes to the other.
It sounds like a user profile will remain on the set up I described.
So for most Linux distros, it might be root/home/[user]/. Right now, it’s just sitting on the Desktop. it’s just remoting into the VM host, so no changes to user profile or database location, regardless of the OS remoting in.
I’m hoping for a relatively straight forward migration progress from JE to CP.
Nice. Thanks for posting. The problem, I think, with the CP version is that it will store the database in the standard location for user data on each operating system which, of course, is different for each OS. I am planning to develop a way to synch them but it will not be a common database as in JE.