Questions on "Semi-disconnected" Environments

[timhenrion]

As a new PM+ customer on macOS, one of the things I'm noting is that PM+ appears to commonly "stall" before rendering contact sheets. I'm wondering if there is any way I can optimize this.

Background:
My photo library exists as files on a Linux server that has a connected storage array. Mac accesses this library via SMB. PM+ is configured with a catalog that syncs the directory on my SMB server, which contains all my image files.  Most of these files are DNGs and native RAW files (CR2, CR3, and Fuji). My PM+ catalog is on my Mac's main flash drive and is always accessible. I've been using this setup with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for many years. I've set up a workflow to properly sync metadata across Lightroom Classic, Peakto, and PM+, and it appears deterministic and reliable as long as I remember to sync programs in the correct order.

One important thing to understand about the storage array on my Linux server is that it is configured by default to spin all drives down after 5 minutes of inactivity. When my storage array drives are spun down, any program attempting to open a file on my storage array via SMB will see a delay until the required drives spin up and serve the file.

My main workflow in PM+ involves using the "Browse" tab in the catalog to drill down into specific folders in the Folder Path and wait for them to render as a Contact Sheet. Sometimes when I select a folder, PM+ renders an empty Contact Sheet, which populates 15-30 seconds later. I'm trying to get rid of this "delay". This delay usually occurs while the storage array drives are spun down, but it also happens when they are spinning, which is confusing to me.

Questions:

• Are there any reasons why PM+ would pause before rendering Contact Sheets in this manner? Does PM+ always pull Contact Sheet thumbnails directly from the actual files, rather than from a preview cache? If so, any recommendations on anything I can do to eliminate this delay, other than changing the "spindown" behavior on my storage array drives (which is problematic for me at the moment)?
  Are there other PM+ behaviors I might not yet have stumbled on that would be affected by a delay in my server being able to serve image files?

Thanks!

[Kirk Baker]

Tim,

Questions:

• Are there any reasons why PM+ would pause before rendering Contact Sheets in this manner? Does PM+ always pull Contact Sheet thumbnails directly from the actual files, rather than from a preview cache? If so, any recommendations on anything I can do to eliminate this delay, other than changing the "spindown" behavior on my storage array drives (which is problematic for me at the moment)?
• Are there other PM+ behaviors I might not yet have stumbled on that would be affected by a delay in my server being able to serve image files?

1) If the files are available, they're always rendered.  If the files are unavailable, the proxies are used.  There is no way to change this behavior.
2) Anything that needs to read from (or write to) the files on spun-down drives will be affected.  Renaming/tagging/rating/color class/soft rotation/cropping/updating metadata.

HTH,

-Kirk
 

[timhenrion]

OK, so what's the best way to troubleshoot long "delays" and "hangs" in PM+'s UI?

Case in point, this just happened::
I have a directory on my NAS that's part of a catalog. That directory has 75 image files in it. Using the Finder,  I moved the folder inside of a sibling folder. I then ran a full Catalog Sync in PM+, and the files show up in the new location, along with the old folder location still showing the files as "Unavailable" in the catalog. Exactly as I expect. I'll remove the old folder location from the catalog.

I right-click on the old folder location in the Folder Path Browser in PM+ and select "Remove Folder".
Photo Mechanic Plus hangs.

It's been sitting there for at least 5 minutes now. The menus don't work, and I can't click on anything. Maybe it will come back, and maybe it won't.
At the 10-minute mark, I right-click on the PM+ icon in the dock, expecting to see "Force Quit". Instead, I just see "Quit," so I quit the program.

Restarted PM+ and a BugSplat is on its way. It looks like the program hung/crashed trying to display a window using libgdk.

After the bugspat was sent and the program started, the removed folder appears to be gone as expected. I should add that hangs/pauses like this happen more than I'd like to see. Not all generate BugSplats.

macOS 26.3 on an M2 Ultra with 128GB of RAM.