Struggling with intial setup

[Aethondon]

Hi, I've quite recently moved across from mac to ubuntu (to escape the tech broligarchy) and am not a very experienced coder. I want to once and for all get my music library all together and hope Beets might be the way to do this. However I'm struggling. I've followed the getting started and walkthrough guides but I can't seem to get beyond the error command that the database file cannot be opened. Both guides say that beets will automatically create this file automatically but it doesn't seem to happen. Can anyone advise me what I am doing wrong? Sorry for what I assume is quite a basic failing on my part.

The longer message from beets --vv config - p is:

/home/donald-waters/.config/beets/config.yaml
data directory: /home/donald-waters/.config/beets
plugin paths: 
Sending event: pluginload
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 1015, in _make_table
    rows = tx.query('PRAGMA table_info(%s)' % table)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 858, in query
    cursor = self.db._connection().execute(statement, subvals)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 942, in _connection
    conn = self._create_connection()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/library.py", line 1441, in _create_connection
    conn = super()._create_connection()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 956, in _create_connection
    conn = sqlite3.connect(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/ui/__init__.py", line 1215, in _open_library
    lib = library.Library(
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/library.py", line 1432, in __init__
    super().__init__(path, timeout=timeout)
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 928, in __init__
    self._make_table(model_cls._table, model_cls._fields)
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 1014, in _make_table
    with self.transaction() as tx:
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 850, in __exit__
    self.db._connection().commit()
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 942, in _connection
    conn = self._create_connection()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/library.py", line 1441, in _create_connection
    conn = super()._create_connection()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/share/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 956, in _create_connection
    conn = sqlite3.connect(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file

error: database file /home/donald-waters/music/beets/data/musiclibrary.db cannot not be opened: unable to open database file

[semohr]

Hi Donald, welcome to the Linux side 🐧 Don’t worry, this is a pretty common stumbling block, and it usually comes down to where the database file is being created. From the error message:

/home/donald-waters/music/beets/data/musiclibrary.db cannot not be opened

Beets is trying to put its database in /home/donald-waters/music/beets/data/. The “unable to open database file” error almost always means one of:

1. The directory doesn’t exist yet.
   Beets doesn’t create all the parent folders for you — it’ll create the musiclibrary.db file, but the path leading to it has to exist already. Try:

   mkdir -p /home/donald-waters/music/beets/data

   Then re-run your Beets command.

2. Permissions issue.
   If the folder exists but Beets can’t write there, check ownership:

   ls -ld /home/donald-waters/music/beets/data

   It should belong to your user. If not, fix it with:

   chown -R donald-waters:donald-waters /home/donald-waters/music/beets

3. Config path mismatch.
   Double-check your config.yaml under directory: and library: settings. For example, you might want:

   directory: ~/music/beets
   library: ~/music/beets/musiclibrary.db

   That way the database lives directly in the same folder rather than in a nested data/ path.

Once the directory exists and is writable, Beets will create the database automatically the first time you run it.

[Aethondon]

Thank you so much for this extremely helpful response! I will try all of the above as soon as I get a moment :)