When there is no database and digikam is started for the first time, digikam starts to initialize all the photos in the collection. This takes a long time. Especially the part that is outputting: digikam.general: mimetype = "JPEG" ext = "JPG" digikam.metaengine: Orientation => Exif.Image.Orientation => 1 digikam.general: mimetype = "JPEG" ext = "JPG" digikam.metaengine: Orientation => Exif.Image.Orientation => 1 Takes a long time. As there is no indication what file is processed, the used does not have much about the above included information. Add the filename of the photo that is processed to the messages above, this would make it already more useful / informative. In the case digikam was started from the command line. I also missed a progress marker, but perhaps I overlooked it? I also missed a remark whether it is OK to interrupt this DB recreation process. May it be stopped and will it continue when digikam is restated next time. Anyway, it might be useful to add a remark about this at the DB configuration screen.
All these info printed on the console are debug statements. In production, there are not visible. The progress manager is displayed on right side of status bar while collection scanning. Gilles Caulier