On 1/15/26 3:34 PM, John Blinka wrote:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 2:18 PM Dale <[email protected]> wrote:
On 1/15/26 10:42 AM, John Blinka wrote:
Hello, Gentooers,
I just tried opening gramps after a very long period of disuse. It
fails to open and gives this error message:
13254: ERROR: dbloader.py: line 107: can't load database backend: 'bsddb'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3.13/site-packages/gramps/gui/dbloader.py",
line 188, in read_file
db = make_database(dbid)
File "/usr/lib/python3.13/site-packages/gramps/gen/db/utils.py",
line 88, in make_database
raise Exception(f"can't load database backend: '{plugin_id}'")
Exception: can't load database backend: 'bsddb'
I am up to date with portage, and running gramps-6.0.4, which was
updated Nov 10, 2025 from gramps-5.2.3. Gramps was built with these
use flags:
* Found these USE flags for app-misc/gramps-6.0.4:
U I
+ + exif : Add support for reading EXIF
headers from JPEG and TIFF images
+ + geo : Enable rendering of
geographical data using sci-geosciences/osm-gps-map
+ + postscript : Enable support for the
PostScript language (often with ghostscript-gpl or libspectre)
- - python_single_target_python3_11 : Build for Python 3.11 only
- - python_single_target_python3_12 : Build for Python 3.12 only
+ + python_single_target_python3_13 : Build for Python 3.13 only
+ + rcs : Adds support for family tree
archives via dev-vcs/rcs
+ + reports : All external software that is
needed for graphical reports will be installed
+ + spell : Add dictionary support
- - test : Enable dependencies and/or
preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by
FEATURES=test but can be
toggled independently)
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Install_latest_BSDDB/tr
suggests that the latest versions of gramps have encountered database
problems and that upgrading sys-libs/db and python interfaces to db
have helped. Their suggested db version is not supported by gentoo.
And their suggested python interface, dev-python/berkeleydb, is not
brought in by gramps-6.0.4.
Before I dive deeply down a rabbit hole to fix this, has anybody
encountered such a problem with gramps? Any suggestions on next steps?
Thanks!
John Blinka
It appears you picked a random email to reply to and just changed the
email address to post to this list. By doing that, you just attached
that email to the Gentoo mailing list email and sent it to every singe
person on a large mailing list in various countries which will also be
publicly archived for years to come.
I've seen this said before and said it myself, ALWAYS start with a new
message when starting a new conversation. Do not hit reply and change
the email address.
I'm not sure if that email contains links to anything confidential or
not but if I were you, I'd be looking into it. If it contains links that
may automatically log you into a account, I'd be changing that websites
credentials fast.
I might add, because of that attachment, some people may not see it. It
may mark the message as spam and off to /dev/null it goes.
Dale
:-) :-)
Woops! No idea how that happened. Dale, you may well be right!
Apologies to all!
Since then, I've discovered the problem. Gramps switched databases
from Berkeley db to sqlite in the past few years. I had a couple
family trees still in Berkeley db, which is no longer supported.
Discarding those cured the problem.
John
The biggest thing, look at the email that was attached. If it links to
any accounts you have, change the login/password. I sometimes get
emails with links that log me in automatically. If you can change
either the the login ID or password, the link usually doesn't work
anymore. I really wish websites wouldn't send links like that. It's to
easy for someone who shouldn't have access to get it.
Dale
:-) :-)
