Darktable won't open

I have just installed Linux Mint and Darktable on my Dell Vostro 1520 laptop and wa hoping to get to know Darktable for my raw processing. As you can understand I am new to both Linux and Darktable.
But Darktable won’t start. I get this message:
“an error has occurred while trying to open the database from
/home/poul/.var/app/org.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db
the database lock file contains a pid that seems to be alive in your system:2”
I have searched the existing discussions and found the advice to delete the lock files. But maybe because I am illiterate in Linux I haven’t been able to locate and delete the lock files.
Can anyone help?

The lock file is here: /home/poul/.var/app/org.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock

In a terminal window I wrote:
cd /home/poul/.var/app/org.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock`
and got the answer:
bash: cd: /home/poul/.var/app/org.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock: No such file or directory

Hallojsa, Poul & velkommen!

On my distro (Manjaro), it is located here:

/home/claesl/.config/darktable/

A good old trick to find where a certain file is located is to run

sudo updatedb

followed by

locate data.db.lock

in your case.

Med venlig hilsen,
Claes fra Lund, i Sverige

Hello Claes,

It worked, I found the data.db.lock file

Now, will this command delete the file:
delete /home/poul/…/darktable/data.db.lock ?

In a terminal do rm /home/poul/.var/app/org.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock

Skidegodt, Egon!

Please show the entire path (to be on the safe side).
Also, as Mica just wrote: it is rm (short for remove)
instead of delete in 'ux.

Med venlig hilsen,
Claes fra Lund i Sverige

@Claes, he is using the flatpak, which puts all config files in ~/.var/app.

Ouch!!!

I did the following:
poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~ sudo updatedb [sudo] password for poul: poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~ locate data.db.lock
/home/poul/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock
poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~ rm /home/poul/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~ locate data.db.lock
/home/poul/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock

Please note that the data.db.lock seem bo be present even after the rm command

I also tried to start Darktable but it still refuses to start and still returns the same error message as before

Perhaps you want rm -rf /home/poul/.var/app/org.Darktable/config/darktable/data.db.lock

the -r is for recursive, and the -f is for force.

OK, it seems that the lock file has been deleted. Now I get this response:

poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~ locate data.db.lock poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~

But Darktable still refuses to start and I get this error message:

“the database lock file contains a pid that seems to be alive in your system: 2”

Is it possibe that there are two lock files an I have only deleted one of them?

I did this:

poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~ cd /home/poul/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable ls
data.db library.db library.db.lock
poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable$ rm -rf library.db.lock
poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable$ ls
data.db library.db
poul@poul-Vostro-1520:~/.var/app/org.darktable.Darktable/config/darktable$

So there was another lock file and I have deleted it as well

But still Darktable refuses to start and gives me the same error message as before

Should I give up and try a to install Darktable in windows in stead?

try

darktable -d control

at a terminal

1 Like

Hello RobertS,

It returns the reply:
darktable: command not found

Poul

Oh, I think there is no problem with Darktable, but in Flatpack. I’ve never used Flatpack, so I’m out of here.

You need to do flatpak run org.darktable.Darktable -d control

1 Like

I did the command and the reply was:
[defaults] found a 32-bit system with 4132596 kb ram and 2 cores (0 atom based)
[defaults] setting very conservative defaults
[init] the database lock file contains a pid that seems to be alive in your system: 2
[init] database is locked, probably another process is already using it
trying to open the images in the running instance

Are you issuing the rm command while darktable is running? If yes, please quit darktable and try and remove both library.db.lock and data.db.lock if they exist.

I have quit darktable, removed library.db.loc and data.db.lock files (rm -rf command) and checked that the two files were in fact removed with the ls command, which they were.
Then I double-click the darktable icon. But again darktable won’t start and I get the same error message as before.
I issue the ls command and see that the two lock files are there again