(Please include your Gramps version and Operating System)
Gramps 5.1.5, Chrome OS
I have Gramps on my computer. I cannot open my family tree because Gramps has locked it. There is no way to unlock it. I have read the manual several times. The instructions in the manual do not unlock my tree. What can I do? Sharon
This indicates your system had an abnormal exit. (A crash or system shutdown without closing Gramps.)
In the Manage Family Tree dialog, there should be a padlock in the Status column of the row with your Tree name.
Double-clicking the row should bring up a dialog with a Break Lock button. Use that to remove the lock.
The Load Family Tree button should no longer be ghosted. Load the tree normally, make a backup immediately, shutdown Gramps normally and restart it.
This process in the wiki in the Manage Family Trees page section labeled Unlocking a Family Tree
The lock CAN be removed from outside the program manually if absolutely necessary. But it should never be necessary.
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I did not know Gramps would run on a Chromebook!
You can go into development mode on a Chromebook and add linux (Debian 11) to your chromebook. Linux is off by default.
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Yes. Gramps absolutely DOES lock a database as it is loaded.
It is not a OS file lock, just a soft lock. A simple text file (containing the name of the OS user who loaded the file) is created in the database folder with the name ālockā. Gramps looks for a file of this name before trying to load.
This lock file is only deleted when the Manage Family Treeās dialog is used to āCloseā (unload) the current treeā¦ after it finishes basic housekeeping. It also closes the Tree when Gramps is shutdown normally.
The āinfoā button in the Manage Family Trees for a selected tree will list the Path to the database folder.
You should not have 2 instances of Gramps running simultaneously. And I now wonder if you have that happening with a VM conflict? Since I only have a couple months of linux experience, troubleshooting VMs is out of my baliwick. Hopefully a Linux expert will jump in.
The other question is about memory. I thought Chomebooks were light on RAM used. (Iām working on a Fedora laptop with 8GB RAM plus a 6GB swap file and this system isnāt stable with that little memory. It locked up writing this response while just running Browser windows!)
Iāve been told to mark this as solved. I have no idea how to do this so if you are reading this consider it solved. I am no longer interested in solving Linux problems. I have 2 Linux computers that are dead as a doornail. They canāt be fixed because nobody knows how. Linux is a waste of my time and money. Iām staying with Chromebook and I will just figure out how to get around its limitations. Windows is even more messed up than Linux. I give up. Consider my problems solved.
One thing to be aware of is that the Gramps user directory files all need to be only used by Gramps exclusively or else they will lock .
Is it possible that on ChromeOS you are using cloudback up software that is accessing the programs user directory files, if so then you need to find a way to exclude the Gramps user directory where ever it is located on ChromeOS
@slffrww Iām wondering have you ever encountered this drag-and-drop issue? If so, have you found a way to fix it?
@emyoulation it really depends on the model. There are not only Chromebooks but also āChromeboxesā. I recently converted my old Mac mini into one by installing ChromeOS Flex. So far, so good (except for the drang-and-drop issue).
Did you install Gramps using Flatpak?
Any chance that your issue is a variant of the Gnome desktop dragānādrop problem discovered in with Fedora flavored Linux?
The offset between the dual pointers while dragging and difficulty determining the real hotspot often gave the illusion the dragānādrop was non-functional. With Gnome, there were 2 pointers. With your desktop, maybe the offset is bigger or the 2nd pointer is invisible?
Gramps has fairly tiny drop target zones for each type of object being dragged. Dropping outside a valid target does nothing.
I donāt know, but I doubt it. The ChromeOS Linux is Debian and does not use the Gnome desktop.
No, would it work better if I did?
Actually, the request was IF it was resolved, to please mark the solution.
The Flatpak contains fairly up-to-date versions of the package dependencies. I would expect that Gtk issues may well be fixed using the Flatpak installation. Looking at the bug tracker, the reported bugs seem to be Gtk related.
The consistent environment provided by the Flatpak may help us track down the problem reported in this topic. I would certainly recommend the Flatpak for older distributions.
I donāt know. Is it possible that Gramps is a pile of junk that just does not work?
There is no crash. There is nothing more than a pile of junk software that does not work and never will. You donāt think I have tried all these suggestions already. There is no Break Lock. There is no cloud. I have two computers that are a piece of junk because I āupdatedā the software causing the computer to lose a kernel. Why put out software that crashes a computer? Microsoft does the same thing. Stop trying to āsolveā a dead issue. I am through with Linux and Microsoft.
There is no ādrag and dropā issue. There is nothing wrong with Chrome. Who cares if chrome is light on RAM when Microsoft and Linux are totally useless?
I would expect Gramps to run on an entry level Chromebook with 4GB RAM.
However we canāt possibly test Gramps on every operating system. This is why I suggested a Flatpak installation.
Gramps is available on Flathub:
Another option would be to try to delete the lock file manually from the command line. It is a file called ālockā which can be found in a sub-directory of ā~/.gramps/grampdbā on Linux systems. Try: rm ~/.gramps/grampdb/dirname/lock where dirname should be replaced by the actual directory name.
@Nick-Hall I will try the flatpak install on one of my machines. What is the best way to completely uninstall my current installation of Gramps?
If you installed it with a package manager, then remove it the same way.