Coppermine is the gallery solution for my particular setup?

[pmhail]

My home network design is:
1. Linux (Debian) NAS server with following active roles:
- Samba, Plex Media Server, Transmission, FTP, SSH, Apache, MySQL
2. 3 PC (Windows
3. 1 Media Player (Windows 7) + Plex Media Center
4. 1 Linux based Media Player with DVD interface (without browser)

My pictures are stored on Linux NAS server on folder, shared read only for internal clients.

My needs are:
I want to install an web gallery software to provide access to my pictures for my distant family.
I don't want to duplicate my pictures for publishing to Coppermine.
I want to keep my original pictures read only and not store thumbnails and resized pictures to original pictures folder.

I want to know if Coopermine is the right solution for me?
Thank you in advance and sorry for my poor English.

[Αndré]

I want to know if Coopermine is the right solution for me?

I don't think so, as Coppermine creates thumbnails and (depending on your gallery setup) intermediate-sized versions of your original pictures.

[alvin]

I have these exact requirements (i wonder how many others there are with them). I even went through the arduous task of evaluating most (if not all) of the top gallery software listed on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_photo_gallery_software). All seemed to fall short somewhere. For coppermine, the challenge was keeping the thumbnails in a separate directory and keeping the original file unchanged (even when rotating). I managed to overcome the first by doing the following steps:

1. Mirror my picture directory via symbolic links to the image (linux-only).
   The command: cp -rs <original image directory> "<coppermine directory>/albums/>"
2. Set permissions
    On images, ensure that coppermine server CANNOT modify the images. On apache, ensure that user www-data cannot modify
    On directories, set owner to coppermine process. On apache, chown -R www-data:www-data "<coppermine directory>/albums/>"
3. Install and run the mass_import plugin
You will still have the challenge of adding and importing new images added to the image directory. (I plan on writing a script to identify and import the differences)

I never was able to fully overcome the second issue. I wish Coppermine was able to do something like TinyWebGallery, who store rotated images as a separate file within a cache, which can be rebuilt, deleted, or updated.

Because I have over 40K images and want a professional interface and the software to always work, I still chose Coppermine over Gallery 3 and TinyWebGallery.