Digikam processes don't quit when user exits Digikam, and files remain locked.

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi George,

The problem has been already reported for digiKam 8.7.0, and fixed for
the next 8.8.0 release. You can try the 8.8.0 pre-release available
here :

https://files.kde.org/digikam/

8.8.0 is mostly a bug fixes release including few new features. Take a
look at current NEWS files for details :

https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam/-/raw/master/NEWS?ref_type=heads

We plan to release 8.8.0 at the end of October or first week of
November, depending on free time and the last bugs to close.

Best regards

Gilles Caulier

Le mer. 8 oct. 2025 à 02:18, George Koulomzin <George at koulomzin.com> a écrit :
>
> It appears that on Windows 10/11, exiting Digikam leaves a background process which may continue to hold active file handles or locks, preventing a subsequent Digikam instance from accessing those files.
>
> I am using Digikam 8.7.0 with SQLite.
>
> I can replicate the issue as follows:
>
> When I start digikam, Process Explorer shows a new digikam.exe process.   If, not having done anything, I stop the digikam process by pressing the red "x" in the upper right hand corner, the digikam.exe process shown in Process Explorer does not exit.  After a short period of activity, is settles down and consumes less than .01 cpu and no I/O.  I left it running like this for 15min, and nothing changed.
> This process shows a large number of handles; it looks like there is one handle per directory holding my photo collection.  These directories are on a drive mounted on another computer on my LAN.
> If I restart digikam, a new process with a different PID starts.  Again, doing nothing, I exit as above, and I see a second background process, doing nothing, with similar open handles.
> This can be repeated ad nausium, leaving an additional process each time.
> The drive containing my collections is a network drive mapped to "\\192.168.1.10\Media", were the system at 192.168.1.10 is a Windows 10 system with an internal drive D: having label "Media".
> I find that if I try to change the name of one of the collections/directories in digikam, it reports an error.  If I try to rename the same directory in windows, it reports that the folder is in use by another process.
> I have repeated the above experiments exiting Digikam using  "Browse->Quit" and get the same result.
> The only way I can get rid of these background processes is to kill them.
> However, when I restart digikam after killing all the background processes, I still get the same error when trying to re-name.  However, I can rename the folders by accessing the mapped drive directly.
> I suspect that the underlying issue is that
>
> SQLite does not release some internal locks, and / or
> Digikam should re-attach to any background process rather than start a new one.
>
> The system on which I am running Digikam is  Windows 11.  The system hosting the image collections is Windows 10.  Both systems are up-to-date.
>
> Any help or insight will be greatly appreciated
>
> --
> George Koulomzin
> 7 Bridge Hill Lane,
> PO Box 781
> Bridgehampton, NY, 11932
> (m) 914-393-6179
> (h) 631-537-4956
> George at Koulomzin.com