SOLUTION: gPodder 2.20.3 on N900: database disk image malformed

After some strange behaviour in gPodder 2.20.3 yesterday on my N900 (not responding to episode actions), I quit gPodder and tried to start it up again, but it would crash during startup everytime with an error about “database disk image malformed” from line 316 of dbsqlite.py on the query: “SELECT COUNT(*), state, played FROM episodes GROUP BY state, played”.

First, I opened up the sqlite database directly:
sqlite3 ~/.config/gpodder/database.sqlite

I could run that query and others no problem.

However, I found this guide on repairing a corrupt sqlite database, I ran the following integrity check command and it returned a couple errors along with the “database disk image malformed” message:
sqlite> pragma integrity_check;

So I followed the instructions from spiceworks, dumped my database to file and reloaded it into a new database:
cd ~/.config/gpodder/
echo .dump | sqlite3 database.sqlite > gpodder.sql # generate dump file
mv database.sqlite database.sqlite.bak # backup original database
sqlite3 -init gpodder.sql database.sqlite # initialize a new database from the dump file

And, voila, gPodder is working again.

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