[Gramps-users] "corrupted" database

[S. A. H. <sh...@ho...>]

First, of all, I have been using Gramps for a couple years, and have
been very happy with it. I finished entering a large portion of my new
genealogical information in April, and sometime over the summer,
upgraded my workstation to Debian/Lenny (testing) from Debian Etch.
Debian Lenny has gramps 3.0.1-1, whereas Etch has 2.2.3-1, I believe.

When I opened my database, it was missing about 75% of my families
(actually, the IDs were there, but the entries were just blank). I tried
to make use of the database repair tools, to no avail.

Now, here's the weird thing--I have many backup copies, stretching into
early 2007, and I know that these all opened correctly at one time. When
I open them with Gramps 3.0.1-1, I get the same behavior. Interestingly,
if I downgrade to 2.2.3-1, I get the same behavior--most of the families
are empty.

Now, I had a laptop that had a old Etch installation with Gramps
installed, and the same databases opened fine--everything was in there.
Not knowing that I was about to lose my last lifeline to my data, I did
an update on my installation (security updates, etc.--NOT an upgrade to
Lenny), and whoalla--the relationships were empty.

So, I theorize that some minor dependent package broke Gramps ability to
parse the database correctly. So, I downloaded historical ubuntu
live-cds and couldn't get anything to load my backup databases (I would
love to try an old etch live-cd, but I couldn't fine one).

Anyhow, I am quite distressed only because I'm sure, like all of you,
I've invested a huge amount of time, and I have faithfully made backups.
I suspect that the root cause may not be gramps, but some minor
dependency that broke 2.2.3, but I bet most folks out there didn't
notice since it is a rather old distribution and most are probably on
Ubuntu or something more hip, anyhow.

If anyone has any ideas, or could help me recover my data, I would VERY
much appreciate it. If there are any low-level APIs or something that
would let me parse the database, that would be useful info, too.

Thanks,
Andy