[digiKam-users] wastebin problem

[Andreas T. Ege]

Hi there,

I have a major problem with digikam's wastebin.
It started with suddenly having part of my main album duplicated, with
all the files in it "hidden". No idea how that happened, but the
duplicate was suddenly there. I double checked, seemed all to be in
duplicate, so I moved the double to the wastebin. That did also move the
whole (and not just the duplicated parts) of the original album to the
wastebin.

So far, so bad. Went into the wastebin, selected all the bloody files
and clicked restore.
Result: 2 subfolders of the album are (possibly) restored, the rest went
to Nirvana, and some 18000+ files are still in the wastebin. Selecting
those and hitting restore results in some intense cpu action, the
wastebin going to 0 files, no change in the album and when leaving and
then returning to the wastebin, the same files are still in it.
(Interestingly, deleting these files took hardly any time at all, while
restoring them seems to take forever.)

Luckily, it seems the most important (i.e., not back-uped) folder is
restored, though I'm hesitant hitting the "repair hidden items"  entry
considering the rather unexpected way the wastebin responds.

Digikam 7.1.0 under Manjaro and XFCE.

Any suggestions how to proceed without messing things up even more?

--
Sincerely,

Andreas T. Ege
Dr. med. vet., MRCVS, MABVA
     mob: [phone]

[Andreas T. Ege]

Hello,

short amendment: when I try to restore some of the files in the wastebin
one image a time, I get a digikam dialogue telling me "could not restore
xxx from wastebin", without any further explanation.

3 messages on the command line, that seem to be significant:
digikam.database: No location could be retrieved for
"/home/spheniscid/bilder/privat/pentax/Alles/hochzeitstag_alexis_2013/web/IMGP4650.JPG"
digikam.general: Thumbnail is null for
"/home/spheniscid/bilder/privat/pentax/Alles/hochzeitstag_alexis_2013/web/IMGP4650.JPG"
digikam.database: No itemShortInfo could be retrieved from the database
for image "IMGP4650-7d938247-584d-462a-bf38-fb0f87cbc918.JPG"

Do I have a database problem?

Where does digikam actually place the wastebin on the harddrive? Would
it be possible to access that with a file browser and restore files
manually? Or is it "virtual" in the sense it is handled via the database?
--
Sincerely,

Andreas T. Ege
Dr. med. vet., MRCVS, MABVA
     mob: [phone]

[Andreas T. Ege]

Hello,

2nd amendment.
Just noticed, by now digikam has restored 2 instances of the album, one
with 2 subfolders, and one with 1 subfolder (pentax/01neu;
pentax/internet and pentax/01neu; respectively). The folders 01neu seem
to have identical contents, though in the first set the files are
hidden, in the second they are normally visible. Pretty much the same
situation as before deleting the duplicate with hidden files, only way
less files. :-(

--
Sincerely,

Andreas T. Ege
Dr. med. vet., MRCVS, MABVA
     mob: [phone]

[Andreas T. Ege]

Hello,

panic over. It was just a temporal problem. After not shutting down
digikam all files were restored yesterday evening when I came back from
work. :-)
Don't quite understand why restoring files from the wastebin takes so
much longer than moving them into it, but hey ho, just glad they are
back. Might have been faster restoring them from backup, though.
The other thing I don't quite understand is, what's been happening in
the background. When I started the restoration process, digikam was
pretty much hogging 1 core to 90-100%. That dropped to normal background
use hours before the pictures showed up in digikam again, and according
to htop digikam was showing no activity higher than background. Why does
it take that long if it hardly uses any resources?

The situation that started it remains, though.
I got one folder "pentax" with a lot of subfolders including "01neu" and
"internet". There's that weird double entry of "pentax" with only the 2
subfolders "01neu" and "internet". Files in those subfolders are all
"hidden". I haven't created that doublicat and really would like to get
rid of it. But deleting it moved the whole original "pentax" folder to
the wastebin.
Anybody an idea how I can get rid of this partial doublicat?

Digikam also offers me the option of "repairing" the hidden files. What
actually does that do? In my understanding, something that's hidden
doesn't need repairing but finding/ unhiding. Considering the effect of
deleting this folder, I'm a bit worried about trying anything on it at
that point.
Certainly not before have done another backup.
--
Sincerely,

Andreas T. Ege
Dr. med. vet., MRCVS, MABVA
     mob: [phone]