I'm using ubuntu 14.04 and Shotwell crashes mere seconds after I load it, it hasn't behaved like this before. Before it crashes it begins to auto-import-photos and then it shuts down. It generated two different crash reports in var/crash but I don't know what to do with them. What could be the problem? How to find out what the problem is?

I purged shotwell and reinstalled it - I also deleted all its thumbnails and its database. I copied all my photos into another folder as well - so that it would reimport all my photos anew. It copied 4500 photos from the 17000 photos in total before it crashed again.

it got me toally baffled.

Any ideas what could be wrong?

Have you removed your .shotwell directory? That should get rid of any database files. Sounds like you already did do that. I'd tell it to not import, you don't have to accept it performing the import. Then later you can import segments of your photos. I'd say import a few photos and look at the size of your .db file and see if it had become unnecessarily large.

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I did remove the datebase as well as all my photos in the picture directory and let shotwell reload my photos from back up. It crashed again. after a few thousand photos had been copied.

Fed up I downloaded f-spot and let it load my photos from backup I let f-spot copy my photos back into my picture directory. However I noted that f-spot crashed as well but not until it had copied my photos till the year 2013, so only the last 8 months hadn't been copied.

I then run a brand new installation of shotwell again and it updated its datebase fine from my photos in the picture subdirectory - it didn't crash. I figured that something was wrong with my photos in the year 2014, so I added a month at the time. Shotwell crashed again when I added the month of May. When I checked my photos in that month I found 2 video files had been copied there - mp4 files with nothing on it - I have no idea where these video files come from or how they had got unto my computer, but somehow they got there. I deleted the files and then added all my photos of 2014, Shotwell loaded and updated fine and is up and running fine again.