---
title: "Fixing" a Banshee music database
date: 2010-04-21T00:00:00.000Z
---

NOTE: This is a bit verbose in the description, but maybe you can learn something from the process. If you just want to know how to fix the Banshee database after changing user-name or moving your library to a different location, scroll down.

I recently reinstalled Ubuntu and in the process changed my user-name to my more commonly used 'cybolic', however after copying the `~/.config/banshee-1` directory to my new home-dir, I realised that Banshee had all my music indexed by absolute path, meaning that it was looking for my old home-dir and so couldn't play any tracks.

To fix it I assumed I would have to do a search and replace on its database, but I needed the filetype, so a quick `file ~/.config/banshee-1/banshee.db` later I now knew that it was in SQLite 3.x format.

Now on to a tool to do the search and replace on the database...

Ubuntu has a tool in its repos called `sqlitebrowser`, that sounded about right, so I installed it and yes, it allowed me to browse the database and perform SQL queries - just what I needed.

So, long story short, to change the location of your music files in the Banshee database, here's what you do (close Banshee first):

```bash
sudo aptitude install sqlitebrowser
sqlitebrowser ~/.config/banshee-1/banshee.db
```

Now change to the tab labelled "Execute SQL" and write something like the following:

```sql
update CoreTracks set Uri = replace(Uri, '/home/<olduser>', '/home/<newuser>');
update PodcastEnclosures set LocalPath = replace(LocalPath, '/home/<olduser>', '/home/<newuser>');
```

You are now done and can start Banshee again :)