The serverpc is now being used to store additional mapping resources, specifically aerial photos as the amount of space these take up is significant and at times has filled up a lot of disk space on mainpc. I am working on a new layout of my keyboards so that I can use both computers at the same time for mapping quite easily, since Qgis will mostly be running in a VM on serverpc since it can be allocated 12 GB of memory on that computer. At the same time I am using a MapResources VM specifically set up on mainpc in order to be able to guarantee saving the session each time that I shut down that computer. This is because I have experienced ongoing issues with hibernation in Debian which can be very reliable a lot of the time but can also be frustratingly unreliable at other times. I got the replacement K230 keyboard and it’s much better than the previous one so that is the keyboard being used.
The two keyboards, the main one that is switchable between computers and the K230 keyboard for serverpc, will have a double stacked sliding shelf arrangement so that the main keyboard shelf I have that slides under the desk will come all the way out for the main keyboard, and above it will be a second shelf that also slides out, and holds the keyboard and mouse for serverpc. This second shelf will not be able to be slid in without removing the keyboard and mouse off it, as it will go right under the desktop with no clearance. I am working today on that plus also increasing the size of the right hand keyboard slide where the keyboard for the Windows computer sits, because a bigger one is needed, and installing a slide on the left hand side, that will be used only for cups. So a lot of work today with the woodworking tools etc to achieve that.
One of the things I am going to have to do with the aerial photos while mapping is to make VRT layers out of them in order to reduce the number of layers, this should improve the processing, and at the same time reduce the number of layers that are being stored on disk to only the ones actually needed, because of the disk space usage. Since I am eventually going to want to be using the aerial coverage for the whole country. In order to be able to select just the images I want, I am going to have to learn scripting so that I can have a script that will read the QLR layer definition files that Qgis produces, and grab the specific images listed and copy them (along with the sidecar files) to another directory. Apart from having only the files that I need, it also means the VRT create utility can only use the files it needs.