Darktable crashes seconds after loading

Software
1

Hi, I’m a brand new user of Darktable. I succesfully loaded it on my laptop yesterday and imported thousands of files. (actually tens of thousands) that may be my problem.

now every time I try to run DT v5.4 it starts, displays a ‘startup’ screen in the lightroom, where I can clearly see in the lower graphical display, then crashes.
I have uninstalled and re-installed the program several times this afternoon, to no avail.

I have also installed it on my desktop machine with a problem.
I have a suspicion the data file is corrupted in some way. I let it import literally my entire directory of images while I went about doing other things. The problem only occurred post this operation.

I get no messages, nothing. it just closes down after a few seconds.

I suspect someone is going to tell me I did something wrong with this procedure. I can accept that.

Can someone help me with tis problem without reverting to lots of scripting. I don’t have a clue about scripting. Too old.

I think if I can find where the database of filmstrips is kept and just delete it and start again, I can fix it.

Thanks
Wayne

2

Are you using Windows Linux or Mac?

I use Linux (Mint) and have been building darktable from nightly builds for well over a year without a problem. About a week ago I started having problems similar to yours that were traced back to an updated Exiv2 file that was unstable. That file also caused apps like gthumb and pix to crash on start.

Exiv2 has been updated but there are still problems because CMake does not think the new Exiv2 is current. I am still unable to build darktable but am able to use appimages - which I couldn’t for a few days.

Sorry I can’t be of more help but if you are using Linux you may want to look at your Exiv2 file.

3

What operating system?

4

Windows. I’m not savvy enough for linux etc.

5

Don’t do this. Most likely one of your images is corrupted and leading to a crash. Post a log from darktable -d common (see FAQ for how to details).

Import in folders, until you get a crash again. Then only import images from that folder until you can find the image causing the problem.

2 Likes
6

Thanks for responding. I had a suspicion there was something corrupt in the database.

Can you reply like you are trying to explain something to a 4yo?
What is a ‘log from DT-d common’?
I’ve been looking, but cannot find the FAQ’s.

Can I copy the database from the desktop to my laptop? if so, how?

7

Ok, I worked out the command darktable -d common and other commands in the FAQ (I found it) but nothing works.

If I have my task manager open when I give the command to start darktable, with any of the commands, it put an entry into the background processes, but not the apps section, it lingers for a moment, then just suddenly closes.
So I cannot post a log, because I cannot get the pesky thing to run.

I had it mounted on D:\program files because I put all programs on D drive to save space on c:. I uninstalled it (for about the tenth time) rebooted the laptop and re-installed it on c:\ hoping it might make a different database, but no luck.

Does anyone have any ideas?

8

without a logfile it’s just guessing around. And without even information on you machine (memory, gpu) there are even no hints on most likely causes.

The way to generate a log is described here:

9

@wizofoz welcome to the Forum! Try generating a logfile as Martin described and share that with us.

If you want you could also delete the library/database. I think that is what you tried to achieve when you re-installed darktable. Re-Installing however doesn’t help because the the library, configuration etc. are stored separately from the programs files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\darktable\. you can get there by simply copying the location into the adress bar of Windows Explorer. The %LOCAPAPPDATA% is a variable which will lead to your specific windows-users folder (C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local)

So if you wanted you could delete everything at that location and darktable should launch with a blank slate.

10

Thanks for chipping in Martin, but I tried that and it didn’t work.

11

thanks Mino. This is exactly the information I wanted. I deleted the entire darktable folder from localappdata and it loaded without issue this time.

1 Like
12

Sorry to be a newby pest, but can I synchronise two installations between laptop and desktop machines? Something like copying a database file perhaps?

13

If ALL paths to the images are the same form the perspective of both machines you should be able to sync the aforementioned database folder with something like Sync thing. Alternatively you could setup darktable to save all edits to the xmp sidecar files and read in all sidecar upon startup. That latter solution might significantly slow down the startup. There are a couple of threads in the forum. It will always be finicky.

14

ok, got it. thanks so much for your help.

15

I may not remember to make a PR (hopefully posting here will help me remember), but we should update that document. The paths aren’t accurate. In particular, the log file is in My Documents/Darktable.

16

Hi Martin, following your post, I went to have a look at the folder My Documents/Darktable, but I cannot as access is ‘denied’.

I see 7 folders in that directory that I cannot access.

17

Ouch. That’s not normal. If nobody here knows the cause, you might want to post on superuser or similar PC forum and ask what could be causing it and how to prevent this from happening. It’s as though your user account does not own your documents folder, or two users are sharing it

18

I did some digging. Some permissions were switched off/not assigned. I think I’ve fixed the problem for now, as far as seeing the DT files go.

Thanks again for your help.

1 Like
19

You can repay us by posting a showcase or playraw of something you are working on :slight_smile: :wink: .