I am planning to do a fresh Linux Mint installation on my machine and a top priority is to get digiKam up and running again with my existing tags (and images). The instructions in Recipes about adjusting the records in the database honestly seems a little daunting.
Is there no more simple way to restore a collection? I don’t need all settings in digiKam to be restored except for my image tags.
When you say “a fresh Linux installation”, do you mean you are switching to Linux or just re-installing/updating an existing Linux? If the latter, you should be able to preserve your user directory (/home/<xxx>/) structure, and you won’t need to change anything. If you have to format the partition containing /home, make a backup first and restore it after the new install…
If you are switching from another OS, sorry, I have no idea how to preserve existing databases. One option to allow rebuilding of at least the “tags and captions” part is to have sidecar files for all your images…
I am currently using Linux Mint and want to upgrade to the latest release and at the same time get rid of my dual boot setup. So I figure doing a completely fresh install (wiping everything) is probably the easiest solution … except I am not sure about digiKam
So if I make a fresh install of digiKam on a Linux re-installation (which includes making new partition) with the same folder structure of my user directory, I should not need to do anything other than add the database-files (and digikamrc-file?) from my backup?
I was looking in the Recipes-book and figured my situation was similar to moving the photo library and databases to a different Linux machine. According to the book that means it is necessary to adjust records in the digikam4.db database with the uuid of the partition where the photo library is stored.
It’s been a while, but I seem to remember that digikam worked for me even after a change of computer, while maintaining the same directory structure (basically copying over the user data from the old hard drive to the new machine). I am sure I didn’t have to act on the database directly.
Perhaps check if the book was referring to collections on fixed or removable drives (they are treated differently: a fixed drive won’t be changed for an identical-looking one between digikam starts, a removable drive might, hence the need for usinh the UUID).
Happy to confirm it work by simply copying over the data (images, database and digikamrc-file) 