itunes not opening

Question

itunes not opening

iTunes is not opening. No error messages, no nothing. I click on the dock icon, it shows the little dot below; right click and it shows the options etc i.e. no 'not responding' in the contextual menu. But the iTunes screen will not come up. I tried in Safe Mode same thing.

My iTunes library is on an external SSD drive. Earlier that SSD was HFS+ format, then due to various things with that SSD I reformatted to APFS, restored from another disk to which the SSD was being backed up to, using Carbon Copy Cloner. Is that causing the problem?

iTunes screensaver works fine.

Right click and Quit, it won't quit and have to Force quit.

I copied the iTunes Library.itl file to the local drive, then ⌥+iTunes icon, and the iTunes screen comes up fine and it even plays the songs that are on the SSD. however, it then shows the library folder to be the one on local drive (in iTunes prefs). Right clicking iTunes icon in this situation, shows up a proper contextual menu

below screenshot when iTunes library is from the external SSD

below screenshot is when iTunes library is from local drive

and the iTunes prefs when library is from local drive.

and this error when iTunes library is from local drive

and a huge number of temp files being created in either situation, wasn't occurring earlier

Posted on Dec 7, 2018 10:28 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 8, 2018 1:25 AM in response to turingtest2

Try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac. This solved the problem & iTunes screen opens up--Thanks.

Actually, I had run DU first aid on the external SSD and it didn't give any error messages and had also ⌘+I on the iTunes library file and it was showing correct permissions i.e. 'me' had read and write. But looks like another 'everyone' has been added & it was initially 'custom' which I now changed to 'read only' and iTunes is working fine. Though, now there are 2 'everyone' in the permissions section in ⌘+I (can one 'everyone' be deleted?)

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

272,955 points

Dec 7, 2018 12:50 PM in response to liquidmetalin

Try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac.

See also Make a split library portable for advice on moving libraries around.

tt2

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Answer 3

Dec 9, 2018 5:51 AM in response to liquidmetalin

oh great. this has become very tiresome. Now iTunes is not opening at all.

Background: I was copying the iTunes library files from the backup disk to the external SSD (from which I launch iTunes) and twice it just showed the 'copying' window w/o anything actually occurring. So I force quit Finder. Restarted Mac as well. After the 2nd restart I also used Waltr2 to copy some songs from the SSD folder to my iPhone X and while Waltr2 was still open, I started iTunes as well (maybe this is the cause of the problems?), at which it threw message that library is not correct and a new library file has been created while the older one has been renamed to 'damaged'. After this, when I checked the iTunes folder on the external SSD, the library and genius files had all disappeared.

I tried to re-copy the iTunes library files again from the backup disk and keep getting below error. How can it "not find" the required items, when I'm copying them manually?

Tried to start iTunes instead to see what happens and

Cancelled the whole thing, restarted, ⌘+R to recovery mode and 'reinstall macos' and during this process, I got another b/s message that " a critical software is missing and needs to be downloaded" etc. Had to provide wifi password, but after several minutes of 'grinding gears', another message that "due to error, couldn't download and you can't use the Mac until then".

Is this due to Mojave or some kind of interfering and preventing me from working on the other things and instead I'm wasting time with trouble shooting. Can and or moderators on the forum look into this/forward to tech?

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,955 points

Dec 9, 2018 5:11 AM in response to liquidmetalin

I see. We're straying outside my experience with Macs but on Windows it would probably mean that you'd need to take ownership of the folder using an administrator account and reset the permissions once more. Not exactly how you do that on a Mac. If things are working for you right now it is probably safe to ignore the apparent anomaly.

tt2

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