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

[Gilles Caulier]

The core must be enough as it includes the groups
Best
Gilles Caulier

Le mar. 2 déc. 2025 à 20:47, Jens Benecke
<jens-digikam at spamfreemail.de> a écrit :
>
> 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
>
>