When I first ran the Linux AppImage I went through the "First Run" wizard and eventually succeeded in configuring digiKam to use the local MySql database. Over a few weeks I processed all of my Pictures folders mainly completing facial recognition. Reasonably frequently I have been using the MySql backup facility to export the Pictures database. A few days ago, I suffered a major failure on my boot drive and after I managed to boot I reloaded my Ubuntu System using a Timeshift Backup I created about a month ago. The system then operated correctly. However, I realised that the MySql server databases had their data restored back to the date I last backed up Ubuntu. So, I have been reloading the MySql databases from their MySql backups. Everything seemed to proceed well - I restored my gnucash database and there were no problems at all. However, after I restored my digiKam "Pictures" database the application would not start. The splash screen appeared followed by an error window indicating digiKam was unable to connect to the MySql database - with no indication what I could do. I tried deleting the database and recreating it with no data but that made no difference. So I deleted the "Pictures" database hoping digiKam would execute its "First Run" wizard but that did not happen. Is there a way to execute digiKam and force it to run the "First Run" wizard ? Or can I delete digiKam settings and trigger the "First Run" wizard to run again ? I believe that the MySql server ugraded itself from 8.0.26 to 8.0.27 at some point .... that may be why my restored database was preventing digiKam from starting.
You can delete your digiKam configuration file in order to restart with a First Run Wizard. This is probably under "~/.config/digikamrc". Otherwise, of course, a log from the terminal with an active debug variable would be helpful to isolate the problem first. How the log is created can be found here: https://www.digikam.org/contribute/ Maik
Created attachment 143470 [details] digiKam Error Message trying to access MySql gatabase
Thank you Maik for your suggestions. I was able to generate a startup log and during the process the original error window displayed again. See attachment. That error suggested I try again "with an empty database." So I deleted the 33 MySql tables in my "Pictures" database, rebooted so the active debug variable was dropped, and then ran digiKam again - it successfully rebuilt the tables and then queried me for my pictures collection. After processing my pictures, digiKam was fully operational. I did however lose the three hours of facial recognition data ..... but I can redo that process some other time. It bothers me however that a MySql backup file could not be used to successfully restore digiKam's database. Since the MySql server resides on my Linux root partition and I keep my user data on a different "home" partition (where my backups reside) perhaps digiKam should be given the ability to save and restore database backups itself. Can you consider this as a feature request for a future version ?
Gerry, Important not : digiKam 7.9.0 (and later 8.0.0) AppImage bundle are now build under Ubuntu 18.04 to support a better binary compatibility with all Linux system. As you use Ubuntu 20.04, and if your problem is due to a binary incompatibility with previous AppImage generated from Mageia7, this problem must be fixed now. Best Gilles Caulier
For a database backup feature, i file is already open in bugzilla : https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224312 Following the comment #3 I can close this file now Gilles Caulier