migrated windows digikam to new laptop - databases doubled in size

[George Pearson]

I moved my picture collection from my old XP laptop, running digikam 3.2.0, to
a new Windows 8.1 laptop, where I installed digikam 4.2.0 (-2).  The copy
included digikam4.db and thumbnails-digikam.db.  It appears that digikam as
absorbed all of the images again as new ones, as both dbs have doubled in size.

Clearly I must have done something wrong in this migration, but in my defense,
I have to say that I searched like crazy for advice before starting, but found
no real advice.

I'd like to give this migration another shot.  Here's what I did the first
time:

- copied picture collection (including dbs) first, using robocopy to preserve
date stamps (/MIR option)
- installed digigam 4.2.0 (-2) for windows on new 8.1 laptop
- started digikam - NO albums were visible at this time
- went to add collection - saw old directory there from old laptop (though I
had set new directory during installation)
- added collection for directory on new laptop - this, I think, I what probably
started the duplication of the dbs
- later, albums started to appear, and the dbs are roughly twice as big

How should I have done this?  (This could be a good FAQ item.)

BTW, I noticed there's a "database migration" menu item, but I saw no
documentation, and it did no look like it applied to what I was doing.

P.S.  I think digikam is great, and now with the new laptop I should be able to
take better advantage of it than on my old machine.
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[Gilles Caulier-4]

My migration experience have been also done to write digiKam metadata
in XMP and drop all database files. Backporting collections will
recreate automatically all tags in database.

Else, i see some tips about to maintain database contents, in the way
to remove duplicates entries, typically your case.

When moving collection from a computer to a new one, database use HDD
UUID to identify which device is used to store files.

This is typically your case : you have changed your hard-drive.

Normally, when collection disappear, at startup digiKam must ask to
indicate where collection have been moved (to a new disk). here it's
more complicated because i suppose that you forget to copy also all
settings files (RC files) from your home directory (under windows
~/AppData/Roaming/.kde/share/apps/digikam)

So you have multiple way to solve this problem :

- migrate again all collections without database and scan all files to
create fresh database files
- migrate again all collections with database files AND settings
files, and indicate where collection are hosted.
- perform a cleanup of main database file (digikam4.db) following
instructions from mailing list here :

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322642#c5

Note : thumb database file can be dropped in all cases and re-created
from scratch.

Gilles Caulier

2014-08-19 17:26 GMT+02:00 George Pearson <[hidden email]>:

> I moved my picture collection from my old XP laptop, running digikam 3.2.0, to
> a new Windows 8.1 laptop, where I installed digikam 4.2.0 (-2).  The copy
> included digikam4.db and thumbnails-digikam.db.  It appears that digikam as
> absorbed all of the images again as new ones, as both dbs have doubled in size.
>
> Clearly I must have done something wrong in this migration, but in my defense,
> I have to say that I searched like crazy for advice before starting, but found
> no real advice.
>
> I'd like to give this migration another shot.  Here's what I did the first
> time:
>
> - copied picture collection (including dbs) first, using robocopy to preserve
> date stamps (/MIR option)
> - installed digigam 4.2.0 (-2) for windows on new 8.1 laptop
> - started digikam - NO albums were visible at this time
> - went to add collection - saw old directory there from old laptop (though I
> had set new directory during installation)
> - added collection for directory on new laptop - this, I think, I what probably
> started the duplication of the dbs
> - later, albums started to appear, and the dbs are roughly twice as big
>
> How should I have done this?  (This could be a good FAQ item.)
>
> BTW, I noticed there's a "database migration" menu item, but I saw no
> documentation, and it did no look like it applied to what I was doing.
>
> P.S.  I think digikam is great, and now with the new laptop I should be able to
> take better advantage of it than on my old machine.
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[George Pearson]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Theoretically all my tags are contained in the image files themselves.  If I
reconstruct the db from them, this would be the first true test of whether I'd
done it correctly.

So to reload just from the images only, will this work?:
1.  uninstall 4.2.0 from the Windows 8.1 laptop
2.  remove the db files from the Windows 8.1 laptop
3.  find any rc files created by the previous 4.2.0 installation on the  
Windows 8.1 laptop and remove those.
4.  reinstall 4.2.0
5.  run digikam and "add collection" to point to the directory where I have the
images (No need to copy them again, I think.)

As you suspected, I did NOT copy the RC files (principally because I was
unaware of the need to do so).  I found these on the old XP laptop under a
slightly different directory path - your AppData is ApplicationData, and .kde
is immediately under it, with no "Roaming" directory in between.  There are a
lot of rc files in there, most created a few days ago.

Will I lose any preferences by not using my original rc files?

I've got about 15k images in 1k directories.

On 19 Aug 2014 at 17:45, Gilles Caulier wrote:

> My migration experience have been also done to write digiKam metadata
> in XMP and drop all database files. Backporting collections will
> recreate automatically all tags in database.
>
> Else, i see some tips about to maintain database contents, in the way
> to remove duplicates entries, typically your case.
>
> When moving collection from a computer to a new one, database use HDD
> UUID to identify which device is used to store files.
>
> This is typically your case : you have changed your hard-drive.
>
> Normally, when collection disappear, at startup digiKam must ask to
> indicate where collection have been moved (to a new disk). here it's
> more complicated because i suppose that you forget to copy also all
> settings files (RC files) from your home directory (under windows
> ~/AppData/Roaming/.kde/share/apps/digikam)
>
> So you have multiple way to solve this problem :
>
> - migrate again all collections without database and scan all files to
> create fresh database files
> - migrate again all collections with database files AND settings
> files, and indicate where collection are hosted.
> - perform a cleanup of main database file (digikam4.db) following
> instructions from mailing list here :
>
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322642#c5
>
> Note : thumb database file can be dropped in all cases and re-created
> from scratch.
>
> Gilles Caulier
>
> 2014-08-19 17:26 GMT+02:00 George Pearson <[hidden email]>:
> > I moved my picture collection from my old XP laptop, running digikam 3.2.0, to
> > a new Windows 8.1 laptop, where I installed digikam 4.2.0 (-2).  The copy
> > included digikam4.db and thumbnails-digikam.db.  It appears that digikam as
> > absorbed all of the images again as new ones, as both dbs have doubled in
> > size.
> >
> > Clearly I must have done something wrong in this migration, but in my defense,
> > I have to say that I searched like crazy for advice before starting, but found
> > no real advice.
> >
> > I'd like to give this migration another shot.  Here's what I did the first
> > time:
> >
> > - copied picture collection (including dbs) first, using robocopy to preserve
> > date stamps (/MIR option) - installed digigam 4.2.0 (-2) for windows on new
> > 8.1 laptop - started digikam - NO albums were visible at this time - went to
> > add collection - saw old directory there from old laptop (though I had set new
> > directory during installation) - added collection for directory on new laptop
> > - this, I think, I what probably started the duplication of the dbs - later,
> > albums started to appear, and the dbs are roughly twice as big
> >
> > How should I have done this?  (This could be a good FAQ item.)
> >
> > BTW, I noticed there's a "database migration" menu item, but I saw no
> > documentation, and it did no look like it applied to what I was doing.
> >
> > P.S.  I think digikam is great, and now with the new laptop I should be able
> > to take better advantage of it than on my old machine.
> > _______________________________________________ Digikam-users mailing list
> > [hidden email] https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Gilles Caulier-4]

2014-08-19 21:21 GMT+02:00 George Pearson <[hidden email]>:

> Thanks for the quick reply!
>
> Theoretically all my tags are contained in the image files themselves.  If I
> reconstruct the db from them, this would be the first true test of whether I'd
> done it correctly.
>
> So to reload just from the images only, will this work?:
> 1.  uninstall 4.2.0 from the Windows 8.1 laptop
> 2.  remove the db files from the Windows 8.1 laptop
> 3.  find any rc files created by the previous 4.2.0 installation on the
> Windows 8.1 laptop and remove those.
> 4.  reinstall 4.2.0
> 5.  run digikam and "add collection" to point to the directory where I have the
> images (No need to copy them again, I think.)
>
> As you suspected, I did NOT copy the RC files (principally because I was
> unaware of the need to do so).  I found these on the old XP laptop under a
> slightly different directory path - your AppData is ApplicationData, and .kde
> is immediately under it, with no "Roaming" directory in between.  There are a
> lot of rc files in there, most created a few days ago.

This file path is taken from Windows 7. I never tested Windows 8.x.
Sound like this storage place have been yet changed by M$...

>
> Will I lose any preferences by not using my original rc files?

yes, all digiKam settings are stored in this text file

Gilles Caulier
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Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users