8.9.0: Digikam keeps rescanning complete collection on each restart & grouped images are gone

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi Jens,

As the group of items are not saved in the file metadata, it's not
restored at scan. Restoring the database will fix the problem.

Best regards

Gilles Caulier

Le mar. 2 déc. 2025 à 11:11, <jens-digikam at spamfreemail.de> a écrit :
>
> Hello,
>
> wow, that was fast. Thank you! Will test ASAP.
>
> Will this also restore my grouped images and album properties, or do I
> need to fix the DB file, or even restore digikam4.db from a backup? I can
> execute SQL commands on the DB manually, I just need to know which ones.
>
> Jens
>
> 02.12.2025 08:17:23 Maik Qualmann <metzpinguin at gmail.com>:
>
> > The problem is now fixed in git/master and will be available in one of
> > the next
> > AppImages.
> >
> > https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam/-/commit/
> > 0838075dbb3dd7230a929e3cad56bb6143590046
> >
> > We introduced a directory cache to minimize repeated scanning of the
> > collection. This scanner was not following symbolic links. Thank you
> > for
> > reporting the issue.
> >
> > Maik
> >
> > Am Montag, 1. Dezember 2025, 23:17:06 Mitteleuropäische Normalzeit
> > schrieb
> > Jens Benecke:
> >> Hello all,
> >>
> >> I have been using Digikam on my PC for over 10 years and I'm still
> >> happy
> >> with it. My image collection is now way over 500GB, almost 200'000
> >> files
> >> altogether, and all this worked fine on an i5-4570 4-core PC from
> >> 2013.
> >>
> >> Until last weekend.
> >>
> >> Since having upgraded from the 8.8.0 appimage (beginning of November)
> >> to
> >> 8.9.0 appimage (current), Digikam keeps rescanning my complete default
> >> collection at /home/jens/Bilder (not the second one, and not one on an
> >> external drive), which takes about 2 hours since it's about 160.000
> >> images and 473 GB of data.
> >> /home/jens/Bilder/Digikam is a symlink to a different drive, but this
> >> has never been a problem and this drive is permanently mounted, so I
> >> don't see the problem here.
> >>
> >> Even if I let it finish and exit cleanly, the next time it will again
> >> rescan the complete collection.
> >>
> >> Also I noticed that my album properties (e.g. album dates) and image
> >> groupings are gone since this happened the first time.
> >>
> >> What happened here?
> >> How can I fix this, and - possibly - even restore my image groupings?
> >>
> >> I attached a debug log output (with the Marble log lines removed - too
> >> many) from starting the appimage on the console - maybe this helps.
> >>
> >> Thank you!