Q: Library Will Not Connect to Images on Remote Drive Since Lion

You may wish to start a new thread, since your library is on a fire wire hard drive - this discussion is about libraries on remote drives, so it will not help you much to find a solution to your problem

Léonie

k

got it

Back to the root issue, the referenced file stored on NFS are disconnected at each Aperture's restart.

I upgraded my system with the new 10.7.3 update hoping that this will solve this issue, but it doesn't at all.

I still have my referenced file stored on NFS disconnected at each Aperture startup.

I'm wondering if Apple is still working on Aperture since this issue is quite old now..

Disappointing

I agree, I was also hoping the new 10.7.3 update would offer a fix but to no avail!

Do apple even monitor these forums?

Very disappointing as it all worked so well with Snow Lepord

The thing is that is has never been recommended -- there are many support articles that demonstrate this.  Those for whom it worked in previous versions of OS were merely lucky.  That luck ran out in Lion, and for some earlier.

This is not an indicator for Apple's interest in Aperture.  It has never been presented as more than a single work station application, and the usefulness of NFS storage is not central for single work stations.

Ernie

Ernie, the only recommendation is to not put the library on a remote file system.

I've never seen an artilcle mentioning that Aperture is not supporting master stored on a network file system.

Feel free to provide inputs here.

In my case, the library is on my iMac's file system while the pictures are stored on a central RAID system exporting a NFS mount point.

Laurent.

Laurent,

http://www.apple.com/support/aperture/

This page has several links worth reviewing, and recently written support article link below that goes to the trouble to say "Network volumes are not recommended or supported for Aperture." :

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3942

No where can I find it written that this does not apply to referenced images.  Why would I not be suspicious?

See also:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3252

Directly says:  "Referenced images stored on FAT32 volumes may sporadically go offline."  Does not say but they will OK on network drives using other formats.

Ernie

I must say I remain quite disappointed with Apple software. I used PhotoShop before coming to Macs in 2008. I was excited about the raves over iPhoto but of course soon learned its limitations and that it was not a similiar product in any way to what I had been using on my PC.

I have had a wireless home network since 2004. So I used the PSE4 on my iMac that had come bundled with my Wacom. I joined Mac Rumor forums and last year one photo thread swayed me toward Aperture3 based on it's ability to handle network files. I tried it a few months back when I upgraded to Lion and PSE4 wouldnt work. Like you, I was discouraged and it was difficult to determine if it was Lion or A3 that was unstable over my network. I then bought PSE10. Wonderful, wonderful at managing stored files on a FireWire ext HD across my network of Macs and 1 PC laptop. It was Lion causing network disconnects so I reinstalled my SL OS. I am sticking with Adobe. The cost was and is painful but in the end it works. It never hangs, it loads, it organizes, it works across my network files, stored backups and online sites. It uploads to social media sites. It just plain works and I am releived to be able to sit down and be able to work without constanty problem solving Aperture connection.

I know you want a solution to Aperature and I dont have one, except to perhaps consider a different product.

Sandi

Ernie,

Regarding the links you provided, the first one is tied to the vault usage, and the second one is tied to the library itself.

None is mentioning that the master files should not be put on a network storage.

Again, I never find a piece of documentation mentioning that the master files should not be put on a network storage.

For your information I opened a bug report on that subject, hoping that the support team will respond...

Regards,

Laurent.

Laurent,

I have a different take.  The first provides as resolution to the issue with Vault that:  "Network volumes are not recommended or supported for Aperture."  Nothing in that statement of resolution limits it only to pertain to Vault updating.

Secondly you say you find not "a piece of documentation mentioning that the master files should be put on a network storage".  Clearly, very clearly, the final link has a statement as follows:  "Referenced images stored on FAT32 volumes may sporadically go offline."  Referenced images are by definition Masters.

Ernie

Ernie,

I don't agree with you on the first point, but I can understand that some could think that. Having said that "Network volumes are not recommended or supported for Aperture" when discussing about the vault support should not mean that they are not supported for other stuff in Aperture. But we could discuss about that for hours, the fact is that this is not said that Aperture doesn't support masters stored on a network volume.

Regarding the second point, there is a major misunderstanding. FAT32 doesn't mean network volume. I'd even say that this couldn't be a network volume. FAT32 implies that the volume is local. You may export such a volume as a network volume through NFS, GPFS, AFP, or samba but the file system the client node will see is not FAT32. This being said I don't think this is a good idea to export such a volume due its limititation.

This being said, in my case the exported file system is viewved as an NFS file system on the iMAc whatever is the underlying technology on the server (ext3 in my case). For Aperture, and all the stuff running on my iMac this file system is a NFS one.

Regards,

Laurent

My point about the FAT32 statement, while well stated, was that there are issues that can cause some volumes to go Offline.

On the firstpoint, I believe it is a general recommendation, but yes we could debate for too long.

But my earlier point that Aperture is a single work station app, (and thus little need to have built it for use of network volumes is) is found across all discussions I have ever seen about multi station vs single station.

Ernie

Hi Ernie,

As you seem to know on what's recommended and what's not. Can you give me an advise on how to set up an environment with following requirements which is "recommended" or "supported" by apple/aperture?

Central storage of Masters

local library on 2 computers ( iMac & MacBook )

iMac has 2 user account.

I need fast user switching on the iMac accessing the same aperture library referencing the same masters

disk failure protection for the master storage ( RAID )

periodic incremental backup to another geographical location..

My current setup is as follows:

1 Masters stored on a NAS. Nas is connected to both machines using NFS. This allows me to do fast user switching on the iMac as NFS just authenticates the client computer / IP and not the user. With AFP I would need different mount points and a library per user.

2. iMac has the library stored on the internal HD on separte partition ( Mac OS Extended ignoring user permissions to share between users ). The library references the masters on the NAS

3. MacBook has its own library on it's local harddrive referencing the masters on the NAS

4. The NAS is a RAID 1 configuration -> gives me some security with disk failures.

5. The NAS does every night an incremental backup to an online backup service

Everything works like a charme. Just the stupid fact that Aperture thinks my NFS drive is offline after every restart breaks the concept... This worked before. But sorry, what professional application would not want to allow such a setup. If we would talk about iPhoto I would not argue that way, but hey, people are spending money for a professional application to run such setups.

Btw. Performance is great, even over wireless network, as the local library is small and fast, and the masters are just transfered over the network if needed. A Raw image of 12MB takes in worst case a few seconds. On the iMac with Gigabit Ethernet it's even faster than accessing them from an USB 2.0 device...

So can you give me an advise on how to get a setup fullfilling my access and backup requirements going the apple way?

OSX Lion 10.7.3

Aperture 3.2.2

Thx,

Marco

I will address that later, as might others.  There are many posts addressing the probable lack of effective work flow across two Macs, and some configurations might place those on multiple user accounts but not all would.  The multiple Mac issue has been addressed separately from anything to do with network volumes -- that issue, the subject of this topic, is indeed separate.

More later,

Ernie

Ernie you are debating the merits of a networked drive being used.  He's giving you a use case, it's not off topic.  In fact arguing with power users about why they want something to work on a forum where they are seeking assistance is worse than off topic.  You tell every single person that comes in here that what they're asking for shouldn't work....  You walk a very fine line between devils advocate and trolling...

Obviously at one point network volumes worked just fine.  In fact there is obviously code in the software to support such volumes graciously, hence the concept of offline.  Though that same concept applies to external disks as well.  Someone made a mistake and the system can't even identify that the volume is online.  Further, importing with referenced files on a networked volume works fine and will unbreak aperture for that session.... If they didnt want people to put these files on networked drives, they probably wouldn't allow it on import.  They clearly know its a network drive and (attempt) to ascertain its state.  Inconsistent behavior like that suggests it's a bug.