How to use a Lightroom Catalog on multiple computers

I have one Lightroom database for my photographs, but multiple computers. Of course I want be able to edit my photos on every computer. The obvious solution is to put the catalog on a network share. But the catalog is a sqlite-Database which is build to be accessed by one process only. Because of this, Lightroom forbids to use a catalog that is located on a network share.

My solution is to rsync the catalog before Lightroom starts and sync it back, when the process terminates. To avoid conflicts, I create a lockfile during the runtime of Lightroom. Not very fancy, but this works well for me.

#!/bin/sh
 
if [ -f /Volumes/Pictures/Lightroom/lockfile ]; then
  echo "Catalog is locked by"
  cat /Volumes/Pictures/Lightroom/lockfile
  exit 1
fi 
 
echo `hostname` > /Volumes/Pictures/Lightroom/lockfile
 
rsync user@server.local:/zdata/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom-4-Catalog.lrcat /Users/$USER/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom-4-Catalog.lrcat && \
open -W -a "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4" --args /Users/$USER/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom-4-Catalog.lrcat && \
rsync /Users/$USER/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom-4-Catalog.lrcat user@server.local:/zdata/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom-4-Catalog.lrcat && \
rm /Volumes/Pictures/Lightroom/lockfile