I need to re-install gramps. What is best methodology

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I need to recover Gramps on a linux mint system for my wife carol. I believe my archives have both 3 and 4 versions and that the data base was a Berkley type.

What is best, recovery and upgrade or a new install? I am told that saving/recovering the old link is the message. How to do this BEST is the question. Thankyou Peter

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Under which version were your archives created? If they are too old, you might need to install temporarily intermediate versions to convert data to present format.

It is not clear if you start from a Gramps DB or from a backup. The databases are stored in .gramps/grampsdb/ as a set of directories (one per gramps tree if you have several). You might want to backup them first.

Gramps backups are files with extension .gramps. They arenā€™t ā€œnativeā€ Gramps DB and must be reloaded by Gramps.

Your first task is to determine the version used to create your trees.

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ā€˜Bestā€™ is both subjective and dependent on the circumstances.

If you have current backups (in either .gramps or .gpkg format) then a new install of the current version (5.1.5) of Gramps would be best. Then create a new, blank tree and import the backup.

if you a Gramps installation that is simply failing to load (whether due to add-ons or misconfiguration) then starting Gramps in Safe Mode (ignores add-ons and configuration) and making a full backup (include Media) is better. Then you can do the process above that installs Gramps 5.1.5

If you have a bunch of unidentified version BSDDB database files. I prefer the 2 machine approach where possible. (Because each time you touch a database file with a database engine, the engine updates the file and you risk corrupting it.)

Install the current 5.1.5 version of Gramps to the other machine, then copy the grampsdb folder from the original machine to that directory on the other machine. Gramps SHOULD load these without issue. But in the Family Trees dialog will have all the Trees listed with a ā€œDatabase Typeā€ of ā€œBSDDBā€. Select each on in turn and click the ā€œConvertā€ button in the Family Trees dialog to validate & convert them to ā€œSQLiteā€. Each subfolder in the grampsdb will now include .txt files that identify the name and database type. Make backups in .gramps format (without Media) and again you are safe to follow the 1st approach (of doing a new install of Gramps 5.1.5 on the original machine and restoring the backups to new, blank trees).

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Can you tell us something more about the Linux version that you have now, and the one that these databases were probably made on? Iā€™m asking, because if the current system is of the same version, or a newer version of the same family, it will probably have a BSDDB version that is able to read those files.

According to my experience, Gramps 5.1.5 can read databases made by version 3 and 4, so you will most probably not need any intermediate versions for this.

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