iPhoto '11 referenced library problems

* Whad did I do wrong?

Not sure, but something in the path to the files changed.

* Is there a way to "repair" file references? (That should be a fairly obvious functionality of database rebuilding)

With iPhoto, afraid not.

* Is hacking into the Library.apdb file part of the officially supported solutions?

No. But if you manage, plese post details on how you did it. This question comes up a lot.

You know that all of the metadata - with the exception of Faces - can be written to the files.

Regards

TD

Thanks very much for posting this, it saved me from having to reimport and sort 12000 photos! Worked like a charm.

Update: it worked but only to a point. For some reason I had my shortcut files in my iPhoto library. In such cases this method will not work for obvious reasons.

I am not sure why I had these shortcut files, it could be due to previous versions of iPhoto. So I had to bite the bullet and create a new iPhoto library and re-import all my photos.

Worked fine 🙂

I was using the sqlite console client using a query like this to update my database entries to move all files on the external Volume to the local drive:

update RKMaster set imagePath = replace(imagePath,'Volumes/ExternalVolume','Volumes/<Destination>') where imagePath like '%ExternalVolume/%';

Thank you.

robert

Pascal Mah wrote:

Lessons learned (How I understand the things as far as I know):

A. Library.apdb stores the initial drive and path of the pic files at the time they were imported. This is not modified as the files are moved around.

B. Some other data (BLOBs?) is used to track the files at their actual location. Therefore, it seems OK to move the pic files after they were imported.

C. Unfortunately, this other data is broken if the file is recreated (even with same content and location), for example with a file-based backup and restore (Time Machine).

D. In that case, iPhoto is unable to recover the file if its current drive and path does not match the one when the file was imported, stored in the database. Also there is no mechanism in iPhoto to correct this data.

Regarding point B, yes, for referenced files (ie, image files that are stored outside the iPhoto Library folder structure, when you have the "Copy Images to Library" option switched off), iPhoto '11 stores the file location in a BLOB column in RKMaster called fileAliasData. The alias blob data is basically the contents of a plist file which has in it the serialized data of a FileAlias object which is a proprietary object type that iPhoto uses so we don't know it's structure. However, if you view the data you can see, amongst the binary garbage characters, the file path that is being stored. It should be possible to reverse engineer the FileAlias format to be able to write a program to 'fix' or update this data, a project I might think about 🙂

Prior to iPhoto '11, iPhoto used regular OS X file aliases within the iPhoto Library folder structure (under the Originals folder, which in iPhoto '11 is now called Masters) to store the location of referenced files. This is the reason that Alias Herder no longer works for iPhoto '11, because it no longer uses normal file aliases.

Michael.

PartisanEntity wrote:

Update: it worked but only to a point. For some reason I had my shortcut files in my iPhoto library. In such cases this method will not work for obvious reasons.

I am not sure why I had these shortcut files, it could be due to previous versions of iPhoto. So I had to bite the bullet and create a new iPhoto library and re-import all my photos.

Yes, the shortcut (or alias) files in the iPhoto Library are from an earlier (pre '11) version of iPhoto. That is the way iPhoto used to store file references.

I was able to copy all the real images over my shortcuts and then update the RKMaster table in the iPhoto database accordingly so that it all worked. This way I managed to consolidate my library into the iPhoto Library folder and got rid of any references which could cause be trouble in the future.

Michael.

I have a similar issue, although I could not find old server being referenced anywhere in RKMaster. Any other suggestions?

With iPhoto 9.3 you can open your library with Aperature 3.3 which can resolve the reference issus - upgrading iPhoto and aperature or buying Aperature is a supported way of resolving this now

LN

Larry, what do you think will happen if I run "Consolidate Originals" in Aperture on my library which already has the originals in place because I used AliasHerder?

This solution worked great for me too with one caveat. In addition to setting the fileVolumeUuid column to match that for recent photos (which for me was null) I also had to change the fileIsReference column from 1 to 0. I was using iPhoto 9.4.2.

I had a similar problem where the file path was wrong after changing the user name from josefssonfredrik to fredrikjosefsson, iphoto looked in the following folder .../Users/josefssonfredrik/Pictures/.. when it was suppesed to look in .../Users/fredrikjosefsson/Pictures/.. I solved it using this method:

1. Create the folder wich the images was suppose to be in ...Users/josefssonfredrik/Pictures/...

2. Copy all the images to this folder (this will result in that IPLM can find the images)

3. Use IPLM and rebuild the library.

This works if you can create the folder which the images was suppose to be in (there may be problem if the hdd drive name is different). Also if you can live with the fact that all images are copied inside the new rebuild iphoto library.

I had this exact same problem. I had backed up my referenced library to an external drive, reinstalled OS X on my MB Pro's internal, and then copied the entire library back to the internal drive with the exact same path as before. Even though it was the same drive and the same path, iPhoto could "Reveal in Finder" but not "Edit" (offline error).

EASY SOLUTION for me..... During my reinstall, I had named the main disk "MAC". On my old installation I had named it "TYLER". I simply changed the name of the main disk back to the old name "TYLER" and voilà iPhoto worked normally again. Literally a 2-second fix!!!!!

Hopefully this helps someone else out!

Even though it was the same drive and the same path, iPhoto could "Reveal in Finder" but not "Edit" (offline error).

EASY SOLUTION for me..... During my reinstall, I had named the main disk "MAC". On my old installation I had named it "TYLER". I simply changed the name of the main disk back to the old name "TYLER" and voilà iPhoto worked normally again. Literally a 2-second fix!!!!!

It was not the same path since you changed the hard drive name - when you correcte the hard drive name and thereby made the path the same again you were fine

However there is no advantage at all to a referenced library and it creates many problems like (but not limited to) the difficulty in changing the path which makes upgrading hardware or replacing defective hardware difficult to impossible -- Referenced libraries are strongly not recommended now

LN

Hi Pascal,

thanks for sharing. You gave me hope for a few minutes ;-) Unfortunately that did not solve my problem. My network path is fine and also the entries in the DB are OK.

My problem seems to be that the system (SAMBA or whatever) does not seem to recognize the hostname of my NAS drive any more 😠

The KanadaApfel