"Photo library is locked or you do not have the necessary permissions" after Catalina upgrade

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Level 1

4 points

"Photo library is locked or you do not have the necessary permissions" after Catalina upgrade

I store my Photos library on an external drive. After the Catalina upgrade, I receive the message "Photo library is locked or you do not have the necessary permissions" when attempting to open the the library with Photos. The Photos repair tool fails. I have the library backed up with Carbonite, but I'm concerned that the version I restore will have the same problem. (I'm downloading the backup to my desktop now; it has not finished downloading from Carbonite servers yet.) Has anyone solved this issue?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 3, 2020 10:31 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,120 points

Jan 4, 2020 5:51 AM in response to MarkCCC78

Get Info on the External drive and on the photos library file.

What are the permissions for each.

For the drive, what is set for "ignore ownership?"

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Answer 2

MarkCCC78 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 5, 2020 7:58 PM in response to Barney-15E

Success! The library, once copied over to my desktop, updated - I guess for the Catalina upgrade - and then opened and operated as expected. Thank you Barney. You da man. And I am now no longer panicking over 160GB of irreplaceable media. I'm guessing my Carbonite backed up version would have worked too, but I never got around to downloading it all.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,120 points

Jan 4, 2020 2:26 PM in response to MarkCCC78

You don't have an Ignore Ownership option because it thinks it is a Time Machine drive. You cannot ignore ownership on a startup volume or a Time Machine volume.

Based on those permissions, I'm not sure why you are getting the errors you are getting. The only thing I can think is because it thinks it is a Time Machine drive, but I don't know how that would cause the issues you see.. Is there a Backups.backupd folder or sparsebundle disk image on the drive? Or, are you actually using it as a Time Machine drive?

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Answer 4

MarkCCC78 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 4, 2020 7:04 PM in response to Barney-15E

I had been using it for time machine backups in the past, and there is still a backups folder and sparsebundle there. Maybe I should try copying the library to my desktop, formatting the drive and moving it back?

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,120 points

Jan 5, 2020 8:25 AM in response to MarkCCC78

I don't know if that will resolve it, but that is what I would try.

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Answer 6

MarkCCC78 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 4, 2020 6:52 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks for your reply. As you can see, I'm not seeing the "ignore ownership" option. I saw that mentioned somewhere else and was confused as to why I can't see it in the info window.

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"Photo library is locked or you do not have the necessary permissions" after Catalina upgrade

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