Broke it - fixed it via database renaming - which files should I "restore" to original names?

[ElectronicBattle]

Hello all

I tried some Frigate experiments on what I thought was a standalone, "new" docker instance. It wasn't standalone and, inadvertently, I ended up (I think) writing some of the "new" files into a directory currently in use by a working Frigate system. Effectively, I shared /config between two Frigates.

After a lot of enraged fury, blinking back a few tears and trying to work out how I was going to have to tell my wife that I was about to ruin her Easter as well as my own, I found that renaming a few database files to a new extension of "*.was" allowed me to get the original Frigate (the TrueNAS app version) working again. Relief x 10⁹ !

(Until I did so, the webUI was loading, populating with the menu items and then doing nothing. Reloading gave me a "web page unavailable" even though the app claimed it was working OK).

Here's what my /config contents look like at the moment:

root@truenas[/mnt/temporary/frigate/config]# ll
total 43696
drwxr-xr-x 3 root       16 Apr 18 10:52 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root        5 Apr  5 21:50 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       17 Apr  5 11:00 .exports
-rw-r--r-- 1 root      128 Apr  5 11:00 .jwt_secret
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       89 Apr 18 10:43 .search_stats.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       17 Apr  5 11:00 .timeline
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       17 Apr  5 11:00 .vacuum
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     8192 Apr 18 10:52 backup.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 root    20524 Apr 17 16:05 config.yaml
-rw-r--r-- 1 root  6619136 Apr 18 11:02 frigate.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 root    32768 Apr 18 11:07 frigate.db-shm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root    32768 Apr 18 10:42 frigate.db-shm.was
-rw-r--r-- 1 root  6414872 Apr 18 11:07 frigate.db-wal
-rw-r--r-- 1 root        0 Apr 18 10:42 frigate.db-wal.was
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 87474176 Apr 18 10:14 frigate.db.was
drwxr-xr-x 3 root        7 Apr 17 09:58 model_cache/

What I would like to be able to do is to restore the original frigate.db.was which is 87474176 in size, but would I also have to restore the matching wal and shm files?

The reason being that I want to be able to reference the last weeks' worth of footage and events etc.. but it isn't a complete disaster if it's not feasible (or simple because, let's face it, if I can cock it up I probably will).

[hawkeye217]

What I would like to be able to do is to restore the original frigate.db.was which is 87474176 in size, but would I also have to restore the matching wal and shm files?

Yes, but this still may not restore everything for you if the database was in an inconsistent state.

If you try it and it doesn't work, you could remove/rename the shm and wal files and just try it with the db file itself.

You may also need to run an integrity check on the database if it's corrupted. See this comment: #17352 (comment)

[ElectronicBattle]

Thanks - all understood; I will try it in a day or two when I have properly calmed down!

_{I must learn not to fiddle with things
I must learn not to fiddle with things
I must learn not to fiddle with things
I must learn not to fiddle with things}

[ElectronicBattle]

I couldn't resist it. It worked*, however, so I am not in the doghouse!

*Worked = I stopped Frigate, then renamed the recently created "new" DB files to something else, then renamed my .was files back to original, then I restarted Frigate to find that all is well (apart from I'm now missing the most recent hour or two of events which doesn't matter). I have again got access to the last seven days, which is what I wanted.