One Particular Keyword Tag Freezes digiKam

Software digiKam
1

I have this one keyword tag that, when I right-click and choose anything from the right-click menu, such as New Tag or Properties, absolutely nothing happens and digiKam freezes.
No amount of waiting will bring about a response.
The only way to regain control is to use Task Manager to force shut-down digiKam.
All tags above and below in the heirarchy work fine.
The tag is like so:
Tags > Transportation > Truck > Freightliner > Freightliner Conventional(the problem tag)
Numerous sub-tags and sub-sub-tags and so forth reside below this problem tag and all of them work fine.
I even found that, if I wish to create a new sub-tag below the problem tag, I can create my new tag in any other tag above or below the problem tag and then move it to the problem tag.
This work-around works fine.

I know this is a tough one to troubleshoot.

There may be other tags lurking within my tag tree that will also freeze the program, but I haven’t yet stumbled upon them.

I can most likely create a brand-new Freightliner Conventional tag and move all of my many sub-tags to it; however, I would like to know the what and why of this problem and maybe even how to fix it if there is a fix.

There is no little blue spinning circle; in fact, digiKam appears as if nothing whatsoever is amiss; however, nothing anywhere on the screen will respond to anything at all.

Has anyone else ran into the same situation where any attempts to edit a tag via the right-click menu freezes the program ?

2

If you want to know the what and why, you’ll need to start by reproducing the issue with the most verbose debugging available.

3

Thanks for responding.
How do I go about this debugging ?
To reproduce, all I need do is right-click that particular tag and click on a selection from the right-click menu; so far, that has reproduced the situation 100% of the time.
The right-click menu does disappear once I click within it and from that point on the program is frozen.

I have not yet tried to see what the outcome will be if I right-click and just click somewhere else without making a choice to see if that also causes the freeze up.

4

Since my initial posting here, I have stumbled upon several tags that, when right-clicked, and some just left-clicked, will freeze digiKam into unresponsiveness.

Every suspect tag has been created within digiKam.

This is becoming a huge annoyance and has followed me through several versions.

If a tag ever does this, it will always do it from then onward.

I guess I need to make a list and hang it beside my screen and refer to it before right-clicking any tags.

EDIT: This is what I came up with to warn me not to click certain tags:
I added a special warning tag above and below the problem tag.

Busterfly_WARNING_Butterfly Tag will Freeze digiKam

Butterfly — the tag that will freeze digiKam if right-clicked

Bvtterfly_WARNING_Butterfly Tag will Freeze digiKam

Notice how I intentionally misspelled “Butterfly” such that the special warning tag will appear immediately above and below the problem tag.

Now, as I stumble upon tags that cause the freeze, I will add my warnings above and below.
I also made very noticeable icons for the warning tags.

This is a long way from the situation being remedied, but maybe it will prevent me from right-clicking these problem tags.

5

Perhaps you may wish to follow this digiKam guide about bugs?

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6

I don’t quite understand the lingo here:

“Before to start digiKam and DebugView, from your Windows System Info panel, add a new user variable with these criteria:”

What is “Windows System Info panel” ?

How do I go about adding this “new user variable” ?

I may not be smart enough to do this.

Thanks.

7

This might help with that part: https://geekflare.com/system-environment-variables-in-windows/

1 Like
8

I can’t see at the moment why certain tags should cause digiKam to freeze. Without a DebugView log we wouldn’t be able to examine anything.
There is a new way to enable debug output in current digiKam versions. Go to digiKam Setup under Miscellaneous-> System and enable internal debugging, restart digiKam.

2 Likes
9

Okay…, I installed version 7.8.0 so as to have the internal DebugView business.

I enabled DeBug logging and restarted digiKam.

I went straight to one of the problem tags that has been freezing digiKam every time I right-clicked it.

Completely expecting digiKam to crash as soon as I right-clicked the tag, I went ahead and right-clicked it — the little right-click menu opened and digiKam did not crash.

I clicked New Tag and no crash.

I clicked Properties and no crash.

I tested several more of my problem tags with the same results = no freez-up - no crash - everything worked as it should.

I disabled the DeBug feature and restarted digiKam again; I fully expected the problem to return now that DeBug was turned off — so far, so good; now all of the problem tags are working as they should with no crashes.

I don’t know how long this bit of good fortune will last and we may never know just what was causing the mysterious problem.

Will it have created a DeBug log file that will tell us anything helpful seeing as the program didn’t crash as expected ?

10

Well, here we are again, 27 days later.

After the episode in my previous post above, I had managed to go until now without any of my keyword tags freezing the program.

Alas, my good fortune didn’t hold.

Of course it would be one of the tags I use many times every day.

I right-clicked the tag and the right-click menu appeared; I chose New Tag and the program froze completely.

When it does this, nothing whatsoever will respond and no amount of waiting will put things back in order…; the only fix is to use Task Manager and force-kill the program and start over.

I thought it might have just been a freak deal; so, after getting things back up and running, I right-clicked that same tag and clicked New Tag and it froze up again.

I am waiting for the next stable release and I will install the version that has the crash log ability and generate some crash logs.

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