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

[Jens Benecke]

Hello Gilles,

so I definitely need to restore digikam4.db from a pre-8.9 backup, right?

Do I need to restore any of the other database files as well or are they 
independent from each other?

Thank you!

Jens


Am 02.12.25 um 11:22 schrieb 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!

-- 
Regards, Jens