Can't open database since I updated my Hard drive

Help
1

Hi, I run Gramps 4.2.4 on macOs 10.14.6 and just upgraded my old HD for an SSD. I did the backup and restoration with TimeMachine and everything seemed to work fine except that my genealogy database does not open anymore. I even got a scary doomsday message from Gramps : “-30974,unable to open database DB_RUNRECOVERY : Fatal error etc…”

There is also mention of Berkeley DB (all in French since I am using the French version of the software )

Here is the info from the about Gramps window :

GRAMPS: 4.2.4
Python: 3.4.3 (default, Aug 16 2016, 18:17:24) […
BSDDB: 5.3.0 (4, 8, 30)
LANG: fr_FR.UTF-8
OS: Darwin
Distribution: 18.7.0

Does anyone know what I should do ? The original uncorrupted files are probably somewhere in the TimeMachine back-up, but how do I get it to work ?

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Where is that old HD now? Can you connect it as an external drive?

3

I still have it, of course, but to use it I would need to put it in a USB case. However all the files are on another back-up hardrive where I can more easily access them.
I suspect that the problem came when I created a new user account on my Mac, it seems that both accounts tried to access the database and that it created some kind of DB corruption. Note sure, though …

4

OK, good to know. External USB cases are very cheap these days, and I bought this one from Amazon last December:

https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/dp/B0BPXZM175?ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details&th=1

And if the link doesn’t work … it’s an enclosure made by SANZANG MASTER, and it’s better than the one that I bought earlier, which was made by ugreen.

And if you created a new user, it may be that you can’t access the database files, because they’re still owned by the old you. And in that case, you might need to change ownership of these files, or even the whole grampsdb folder, wherever that is on your new drive.

Also, if you had Gramps configured to open the last used database automatically, and you got this message when you started Gramps. you may just close the error message, and than use the database manager to select the proper tree again, and see what it does. It might then be able to recover the tree anyway. It must have write access to the database folder to work.

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Hi Ennoborg, thank you very much for taking the time to assist me. Actually you got me out of trouble, it was indeed an access conflict between the two user ID’s. After moving back and forth between the two user accounts it finally work.
All good now and I immediately made a Database backup, too.

Thks.

2 Likes
6

Nice, I’m glad that it worked. I don’t have much experience with Gramps on Macs, but when I helped a friend who came here with his MacBook, I soon discovered that it worked much like my Linux, because the OS is also inspired by unix.

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