database problems

[Jack <ostroffjh sbcglobal net>]

I've been using f-spot for quite a while, with about 3500 photos.  I'm  
on Gentoo Linux, and a recent set of updates left f-spot not working.   
One of the libraries it uses got updated, but not f-spot itself, and  
the error on startup included "f-spot caught an exception -  
hyena.data.sqlite.sqliteexception: sqlite error 1: no such table:  
tags".  I assumed that once I got all the other updates done, and I  
recompiled f-spot, it would work again.  (The only reason I have that  
error message is that I extracted it from the google search in my  
browser history.)  Well, after all the recompiling, my next attempt to  
run f-spot said something about a bad database.  Unfortunately, EVERY  
f-spot .db file I could find (scattered in several directories,  
probably due to some attempts at command line start) were empty except  
for a meta table.  The only f-spot backup .db files were from 2009.

I know it's my own fault for not having a recent backup, but I'm really  
surprised that f-spot would overwrite the database unless it started  
successfully and had something to change.  Is there potential here for  
an enhancement request that a backup is made of the .db file before any  
attempt to open it?  At this point I'm really just looking to  
understand when/why/how the .db got overwritten, as well as seeing if  
f-spot can avoid such problems in the future - even if the problem is  
actually in one of the libraries and not f-spot itself.

Thanks for any relevant information, suggestions, or advice (other than  
to do more backups).

Jack