Having trouble opening new gamesdb database

[DJ Dekker]

Hi PicoChess fans,

In order to use the games database in the PicoChess web server, one should "[p]lace a scid database names 'games' with its three files (games.sg4, games.si4, games.sn4) in the /opt/picochess/gamesdb/ folder" (README.md).

I grabbed Scid 5.0 and prepared a new database to replace the one that comes with the PicoChess installation, saved it in .si4 format (games.si4, games.sg4, games.sn4), made sure that all permissions are set correctly, but it results in the following error:

pi@raspberrypi:/opt/picochess/gamesdb $ systemctl status gamesdb
× gamesdb.service - Games server
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/gamesdb.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2026-01-01 19:58:31 CET; 1min 39s ago
   Duration: 178ms
 Invocation: a253a7aadb5f438a871b38263083fee7
    Process: 1478 ExecStart=/opt/picochess/gamesdb/tcscid get_games.tcl --server 7778 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 1500 ExecStop=/usr/bin/pkill -f tcscid (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 1478 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
        CPU: 57ms

jan 01 19:58:31 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started gamesdb.service - Games server.
jan 01 19:58:31 raspberrypi tcscid[1478]: Opening database games
jan 01 19:58:31 raspberrypi tcscid[1478]: Error: could not open database games
jan 01 19:58:31 raspberrypi systemd[1]: gamesdb.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
jan 01 19:58:31 raspberrypi systemd[1]: gamesdb.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Apparently, there is a problem opening the games database. After restoring the original three files, there is no more error message.

Any thoughts on why the new database cannot be opened? Should I have filtered or saved the games in a specific way? Or are there size limits to the database (my RPi5 has enough free RAM)? I have uploaded the database file here (Dropbox).

Greetings,

DJ

[Randy Reade]

Hi DJ, 

Did you copy over the tcscid program as well? It looks like an incompatibility. When I last built a database there a limit to the size I could use. But I was making sure it could be used on a DGTPi so it was probably limited by that.

Randy

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PicoChess" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to picochess+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/picochess/12bf049d-c0d6-42ee-aee3-e2f28ed95422n%40googlegroups.com.

[DJ Dekker]

Hi Randy,

Thank you for your help. The tcscid program was already installed with PicoChess, but Scid itself was not. I installed Scid with its auxiliary applications onto the RPi5 and found that the problem had probably been caused by conversion errors while creating the Scid database from the .pgn source. File size did not seem to be an issue. Stripping down the .pgn source with pgn-extract, removing the offending games and converting to an .si4 database with pgnscid did the trick.

Greetings,

DJ

Op donderdag 1 januari 2026 om 21:09:54 UTC+1 schreef RandyR:

[Johan Sjöblom]

Nice work,... but I am curious so I have a question. Isnt tcscid basically a "headless" version of Scid? One that Picochess uses to run tcs scripts to control?

That tcscid might also need to be updated? I hae a feeling I have it in the repo, but the version is old, so there is a risk of overwrite whenver you run install-picochess as it does a git reset --hard.

-- Johan

[DJ Dekker]

Yes, tcscid is basically the command line version of Scid vs. PC (https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/). The most recent version is 4.26.

There is also Scid (https://sourceforge.net/projects/scid/), but that doesn't seem to provide a command line tool.

PicoChess includes tcscid version 4.25:
pi@raspberrypi:/opt/picochess/gamesdb/aarch64 $ ./tcscid
% sc_info version
4.25

Op zaterdag 3 januari 2026 om 15:31:12 UTC+1 schreef messi...@gmail.com:

[Randy Reade]

Ah, yes. I recall having some bad games causing issues when I built the games database for my images years ago. I guess an update is in order.

Randy

[Johan Sjöblom]

I have now updated the master code so that the books and gamesdb folders are no longer in the repository and therefore wont be overwritten when you update "the next update after this update" :-)

I added a safety net in install-picochess that it makes a backup of books and gamesdb if they exist but no backup has ever been taken to /home/pi/pico_backups.

A simple git pull will not be enough now as that will empty those folders. To get them downloaded run install-picochess or only the install-books-games (see also move-books-games-to-backup)

The purpose is that future updates would not overwrite books/gamesdb for users who have set them themselves. They are now only resource files for new or empty installations.

-- Johan