[Digikam-users] Puzzling, and troubling, issue with empty folders

[Guy Stalnaker]

All,

About a year ago I suffered a catastrophic drive issue. I was able to 
recover images from the drive with appropriate tools. Glad to have 
images recovered, yes, but the recovery application named the recovered 
imaged with a multi-digit name. As such, they were relatively useless. 
Had no idea what the images were, when they were from, etc.

Using exiftool I was able to rename the files and at the same time 
organize them using the exif data they contain.  Once I was done with 
the renaming, I had multiple folders organized by year/month/day, with 
images named using this format: DSCN_YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS.ext.

I was able to use Digikam to find and eliminate duplicates, of which 
there were hundreds, as well as thumbnails.

I've been very happy with Digikam, but recently I've noticed something 
very puzzling. Given the way the renaming process works (I use Linux and 
I have a shell script that uses the commandline applications, exiftool 
and install, to do the renaming) I know, without doubt, that if there is 
a folder in my collection in the year/month hierarchy for any day in any 
month in any year, that the folder can only exist because the script, 
well exiftool in the script, **read data from an existing image** and 
used that data to create, with the install program, the folder the image 
was then put into by the install application.

But now, I have discovered over the past several days while reviewing 
images for a contest submission that I have over 50 zero-file folders in 
my collection. I am very troubled by this. I have deleted practically no 
image unless I knew they were duplicate images (in fact, I used Digikam 
itself to identify the duplicates and I reviewed them visually and 
deleted duplicates only when I could see in Digikam the two images 
side-by-side). I have nearly seven good years worth of images. And 
suddenly I see holes in my collection and I have no way of knowing just 
how significant the holes may be. The year 2008 does not count in the 
matter as I know I lost many of them several years ago (failed CD 
backup). But having 50+ folders with zero files in them makes me very 
worried.

Is Digikam somehow involved? Digikam is the only application I use to 
manage my collection since I stopped using Picasa a year ago. I still 
use my commandline tools, in the script, to move images from camera SD 
cards to my collection where Digikam has, thus far, had no problem 
finding them. I have over 22000 images. Is this a problem?

Here is what I see:
2012 has 1 empty folder
2011 has 2 empby folders
2010 had 4 empty folders
2009 has 17 empty folders!
2008 has 5 emtpy folders
2007 has 1 empty folder
2006 has 7 empty folders
2005 has 8 empty folders
2004 has 3 of 4 total empty
2003 has 5 empty folders

So, that's the report. What can I do? Is there any record kept by 
Digikam of its activities I can check? Has anyone else experienced 
sudden unusual mysterious vanishments? I'm worried.

Thanks for any help anyone can give.

-- 
"There is only love, and then oblivion. Love is all we have
to set against hatred." (paraphrased) Ian McEwan

Guy Stalnaker
jimmyg521 at gmail.com