[digiKam-users] Album refresh

[Martin Burnicki]

leoutation at gmx.fr wrote:
> On 1/15/20 6:48 AM, Maik Qualmann wrote:
>> You are probably looking for the option to monitor the albums for
>> external
>> changes. You can find these in the digiKam Setup under collections.
>> Monitoring
>> for external changes is now deactivated by default, since it can also
>> cause
>> various problems.
> 
> Hi
> Which kind of "various problem"?

I've just recently run into one on Linux.

While DK 6.1 was running, I used a file manager (Dolphin) to create a
new folder inside DK's album tree, and then copied some photos from my
smartphone via a USB connection into that folder.

All those images were corrupted, i.e. an upper part of each image looked
OK, but the lower part of each image was just shown with an empty, gray
background. Also some other photo viewer applications were unable to
display those images.

However, after I had stopped DK, copied the images once more, and then
restarted DK, DK automatically detected the new photos and displayed
them correctly, and also other applications could properly show those
images.

My assumption is that as soon as a download of a photo starts and a
target file is created, DK gets notified and tries to add the new image
to its database. If the download / copying is not complete when this
happens, the remaining part of the file can't be saved because the file
has been opened by DK, resulting in incomplete and thus corrupted image
files.

I don't know if there is a safe way to avoid this problem. A possible
workaround could be to let DK not open the files to make sure the file
is complete before it is opened by DK.

But of course, also disabling automatic detection of new photos should
avoid this.

Martin