What does Deleting Album affect?

Asked by Tsu Dho Nimh

If I delete an "Album" in digikam, using the digikam GUI, what happens?

1 - does it delete a link from digikam to that directory and not show it again?

2 - does it actually delete that directory and any non-image files it may have?

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said :
#1

I believe 2 but I don't have Digikam to test.
You can test it by creating a new album and then deleting it. See before and after what directory was created and what is left.

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Tsu Dho Nimh (abacaxi) said :
#2

the problem is that DigiKam found a bunch of albums and now refuses to start unless I let it delete albums.

Some of them start with /bin and othr system-like names.

I don't want to risk my newly installed Ubuntu just to test how DigiKam handles albums.

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said :
#3

Of course, this is why I propose you test it by creating first a new album (check where it is created and what contains) and then deleting it (check afterwards what was deleted).
I find very strange that digikam offers to delete system directories .... in any case it should not succeed as deleting those requires root privileges (which digikam doesn't have unless you start it with sudo or gksu).

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fred.albrecht (fred-fredshome) said :
#4

I just created an album to test this issue (hadn't really used the album functionality so far, mostly relying on tagging).

Note that you can either *link* or *copy* files to albums. I would recommend just copying and keeping your images in directories named by date in ISO format (as in YYYY-MM-DD, or possibly YYYY-MM-DD-subject as these are easy to sort).

Anyway digikam creates the collection folders at the root of your digikam workspace (on my travel laptop on which I'm writing this it's in /home/fred/Space/Data/Media/Photos, they get moved back to my workstation and enter the backup cycle when I get back home). For your problem, you might have set your workspace as / which is a big no no. You can change this in the preferences.

I created a random album and both moved an image in it (the original was then gone, the file was moved in the new album directory) and copied another.

Then I removed the album. As expected this unlinks the directory and removes all the files it contains (actually it moves them into the KDE trash by default, but once you empty the trash it's all gone).

It seems to me that a link to a file in the album would be safer. Although harder to update when files are moved around, although I don't know if people do move files around. Or maybe albums should be completely virtual (I actually thought they were until I tried this).

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Tsu Dho Nimh for more information if necessary.

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