Gramps And Mime Types With Suse 10.3

The gramps geneology program can be installed using Yast from the repository at:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/.../openSUSE_10.3/
It starts and can be used to generate a new family tree database. However when trying to load the default database or when opening an new database it fails to recognise the mime type of its own database files and refuses to continue loading.

Gramps is a python program which uses the gnome virtual file system (GnomeVFS) for handling files. Unfortunately when it is installed and started the SuSE 10.3 version fails to register its own mime types with gnome. This is what causes the problem. The definitions are stored in /opt/gnome/share/mime.

The solution is, as root, to first register the gramps mime types using the gnome command:

/usr/bin/update-mime-database /opt/gnome/share/mime

Gramps then opens files correctly.