Hello. How can I have my personal Gramps file in the cloud?
You can move the grampsdb folder to the cloud, if you want, but that can be risky.
I’ve it for years on a dropbox folder and i don’t had any issue
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Gramps is pretty drive intensive. Is it slow?
Not particularly. I’m on a 12Gb/s fiber so it’s really quick
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Why would it be slow? All cloud services that I know work with local files, that are synced in the background, meaning that you get the full speed of your local drive(s), with the one difference that the sync process consumes some CPU time and drive bandwith to do its thing.
This is at least what I see with my RootsMagic database on OneDrive, which works much like current gramps, because it’s a single SQLite file, and sometimes a journal.
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Why would it NOT be slow?
There is a major performance difference between using Gramps on a mechanical HDD and a SSD. The difference in throughout between those devices makes a drive intensive app crawl or sprint.
Since Gramps has to re-query the database every time it changes a view (including whenever the sort order is changed), then a Tree with 10s of thousands of records needs a fast drive & databus more than a fast processer. (In fact a only the 1st couple cores in a modern processor are leveraged by Python.)
So the huge pipe @PLegoux uses is the key factor in his cloud storage being an effective option with Gramps.
The normal efficiency in Cloud Services depends on filtering the data on the server side, then piping a smaller slice of data to the local app. This saves bandwidth for the hosting service.
So, if the bandwidth pipeline @Manel has capacity limits, a cloud location for the Gramps database would be problematic. For my situation ( a cellular hotspot that is throttled after 10gigs), it would be completely unusable.
Good afternoon.
Thank you so much for your response. If I understand correctly it can be done to have my Gramps database in the cloud but if this is very large I may have performance issues. Now the next question is: how is it done?
Excuse my ignorance, what or who is @PLegoux?
Receive my thanks.
Manel
El 18 juny 2022, a les 19:02, Brian McCullough via The Gramps Project (Discourse Forum & Mailing List) <notifications@gramps.discoursemail.com> va escriure:
Why would it NOT be slow?
There is a major performance difference between using Gramps on a mechanical HDD and a SSD. The difference in throughout between those devices makes a drive intensive app crawl or sprint.
Since Gramps has to re-query the database every time it changes a view (including whenever the sort order is changed), then a Tree with 10s of thousands of records needs a fast drive & databus more than a fast processer. (In fact a only the 1st couple cores in a modern processor are leveraged by Python.)
So the huge pipe @PLegoux uses is the key factor in his cloud storage being an effective option with Gramps.
The normal efficiency in Cloud Services depends on filtering the data on the server side, then piping a smaller slice of data to the local app. This saves bandwidth for the hosting service.
So, if the bandwidth pipeline @Manel has capacity limits, a cloud location for the Gramps database would be problematic. For my situation ( a cellular hotspot that is throttled after 10gigs), it would be completely unusable.
Manel Gallén Castillo
belluguet@gmail.com
It would not be slow, because a program like OneDrive runs in the background, and you’re still accessing a file on your own HDD or SDD. This type of cloud drive is not a NAS!
I know this, because I don’t see much difference between RootsMagic accessing its SQLite database on My Documents, or on OneDrive\My Documents.
Then we need @Manel to define which manner of Cloud service is to be used. If it is a simple sync’d backup, then it just means pointing the Gramps Preferences media path in the General tab and the Database path in the Family Tree tab to local folders that are part of the Cloud sync. And the Media Objects all need to be within that relative Media path.
If it IS a cloud service that acts like a NAS but with some local caching, then some exploration of limits needs to be done. If the Gramps database is large, it may exceed the caching framesize. Making Gramps stutter & choke like video compression over low bandwidth.
He posted a reply earlier in the thread about using Dropbox with Gramps. Patrice is a power user of Gramps, a prominent poster in the Gramps section of the Geneanet French online forum, and our community’s expert on creating filters & batch processes with the SuperTool addon.
It’s me 
I simply change default database directory in Gramps preferences from its installation default directory to a directory into the dropbox directory hierarchy andclose Gramps, then I move databases from the default directory to my new directory and restart gramps. Et voilĂ .
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Hello. I have done what you told me to change the directory and it works. Thanks for helping this apprentice gramps.
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