I am running the git on Manjaro/Arch (linux) and have moved my Pictures folder to a location on a secondary partition from the O/S.
dt apparently does not like to look in other partitions when adding new images so I copy the raw data directly into a new folder and use the ‘add-to-library’ option to import images. That works but is more of a mess.
What has become obvious is that dt really does not like this filing system and trying to locate other folders is not going as smoothly as I would wish. I feel that others have probably solved this problem and I would like to learn from their experience.
I have tried to change the $PATH to Pictures but that is not really helping. Ides would be appreciated.
I thought that you just right click on any broken connection after the move and then you are asked to provide the new location… Not sure if it will work reclusively… I always try to do my moves within DT so it keeps track…
dt shouldn’t even realise the Pictures folder is on a secondary partition (I suppose you mean a partition mounted within your home directory), as that is a detail hidden by the OS (under Linux).
But if that move changed the path to your images, you will have a problem… If you have sidecars for all your images, and @priort 's suggestion doesn’t work, you could removed the existing database (keep a copy somewhere in case it doesn’t work as expected) and rebuild it from start through “add-to-library”. A bit slower but not impossible (you don’t need to import everything in one session).
But if you do that without sidecars, you will lose all edits, tags etc. (hence “keep a copy of the database for safety”)
If with “$PATH” you mean the environment variable, that won’t do anything for data. It’s there to tell the system where to look for executable files (like the dt program) in case they are started without a path in front of the name (e.g. darktable will have the system use $PATH to try possible locations in order, ./darktable will only look in the current working directory for an executable called darktable).
So don’t add data directories to $PATH.
I suspect from your response that I am doing this ‘all wrong’! Hopefully you can provide some guidance.
First, I probably need to be more explicit regarding my system and what I have done.
I have a 125 Gb. SSD on which my O/S is mounted and this also contains dt. I have removed the ‘Pictures’ folder.
I also have a 2 Tb. conventional drive ‘IMAGES’ that contains only my Pictures folder.
Both drives are fully backed-up.
Assuming that I now want to do this correctly … what is my best procedure.
So if I understand correctly, all your images moved from /home/<user>/Pictures
to /home/<user>/IMAGES/Pictures ?
I don’t know about you “doing it all wrong”, it seems more like you are not completely clear about some of the intricacies of Linux.
I don’t know about “best procedure” either. What’s easiest for me might not work for you, as I use digikam in parallel with darktable (mainly for tagging and captioning). And I have sidecar files for all images, which contain the edit instructions. That makes it relatively painless to just nuke the database and re-import directories “as needed” (but do keep a backup of the old database for a while…). But that is because I have another way to find images I want to use besides darktable.
But @priort 's suggestion is as valid (and probably as time-consuming), and the one to use if you don’t have sidecar files. And if you are lucky, dt allows the path change to be done for a whole tree at once (then that method is definitely faster…)