David,
Thanks Kirk - I get this
[Mac-Pro:~] davidhoffman% cd /Volumes/Scratch/PM6+\ all\ files\ 210406
[Mac-Pro:/Volumes/Scratch/PM6+ all files 210406] davidhoffman% sqlite3 catalog.pmdb "pragma integrity_check"
Error: database disk image is malformed
[Mac-Pro:/Volumes/Scratch/PM6+ all files 210406] davidhoffman%
You could try this to recover the database:
First quit Photo Mechanic Plus if it is running.
From within the same folder as the catalog:
mv catalog.pmdb catalog-bad.pmdb
sqlite3 catalog-bad.pmdb "vacuum into 'catalog.pmdb'"
Note the single-quotes around catalog.pmdb inside the double-quoted vacuum command. You can simply copy and paste the commands and you should be fine.
Please reply with the output, if any. If it succeeds there won't be any output but your catalog may start working again.
Which I hope is more helpful than it appears. If I can't recover this DB it's not a big deal but it's important to avoid it happening in the future. I've done little more than ingest existing files so I only lose time, not data. What does matter to me is getting to a point where I have a database of my 200k+ files which is reliable, searchable, sortable and open to metadata editing.
I don't know if this is connected but I'm having serious slowdown problems with all other catalogs I've made when the sort order is set to any of the numbered options in the dropdown. Cap time, mod time, name, col class & rating all work fine but the sort by{xxx} options are not useable.
If I have one of the sort by{xxx} options selected (eg sort by path) I get a "preloading metadata' progress percentage shown for perhaps 3-4 minutes followed by a sorting message. If I click out of PM while this is going on then when I click back into PM from another app the preloading/sorting is cancelled and begins again. That means that I can't use any other apps while waiting for the sort to complete.
All of the numbered (custom) sorts are done brute-force like a folder based contact sheet. The sorting cannot be done by the catalog system. So in order to do those searches based on variables, all of the metadata needs to be in-memory and then the variables are expanded and the resulting strings are sorted to produce the order of the custom sort.
You can minimize this problem by turning off the "Rescan on resume" checkbox in the Contact Sheet page of the Preferences dialog. You will have to manually rescan your contact sheets when you see fit.
Another aspect of this sort problem is that when I searched 3 active catalogs with a mix of formats this morning using the term NEF$ I got mostly xxx.nef files but also quite a few xxx.jpg files too. Possibly other formats as well but with >100k files I didn't check in detail.
Searching in that way will check all of the default fields ending in NEF. So it's entirely possible to have matches that aren't NEF files. Suggestions:
1) Use the Browse tab and expand the File Type tree and click on "Nikon NRW (NNEF)".
2) Use the Filter tab and create a new filter and set its type to "File Type" and then click on "Nikon NRW (NNEF)".
3) Use the Search tab and enter: filetype NNEF
4) Use the Search tab and enter: filename NEF$
HTH,
-Kirk
