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iTunes 10.5: Permission issue with the iTunes Library file...

Ok all, I have a strange and potentially problematic issue.


Background: Recently upgraded to thee latest 10.5 iTunes along with OSX 10.7.2 and iOS 5 on my iPhone. My iTunes library is large - almost 300,000 songs, but have not had any issues until after the upgrade - except for the sluggishness of the progam (which apprears to be normal once you reach a certain point) as well as limitations with Genuis which I've not been able to resolve in any version. I also have a fairly elaborate Playlist setup which I've refined over the past couple of years. My iTunes library resides lookly in the default location under Music and the Media Folder sits on 3TB external. Note that everything has worked fine up until now...


Anyway, this is just a quick background - and also to set the stage for any suggestions that might involve a 'random' rebuild of the iTunes library as it would involve a massive effort.


Problem: Very intermittantly while playing music I will get an error pop up "Itunes library cannot be saved. A folder was specified instead of a file". Otherwise everything appears working - playcounts are updated and reflected in my SmartPlaylist while I pay, lyrics seem to be added as I play (via TuneText), etc - and all syncs fine with the iPhone.


Now if I shut down iTunes when this happens and try and reopen, I will get the error "The iTunes Application cannot be opened, an unknown error occured (13014)." Now if I look at the permissions of the iTunes Library database it shows "You have unknown access". Note the permissions of all other files are ok.


In the past to correct this I've pulled back an earlier version of the Library from my Time Machine which of course is not ideal. I've also set up a parallel library about a year ago which can open fine (I use this other one to stage the music before importing into my main one in that the main is too slow to edit anything major).


So far I've tried Repairing Permissions and reinstalling the iTunes.app but the intermittant problem is not resolved.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 16, 2011 9:26 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 19, 2011 1:11 AM

Hi there,


I had the exact same problem. Been trying to figure this one out for quite a while. But for me the following worked. Hope I can explain this clearly.


I've created a new user account on my mac, gave it administrator permissions. Logged out from my own account and logged in with the new.

After that I've accessed the iTunes folder of my own account. You can access this with the password of the new account.

Then I sellected the iTunes folder, "cmd i" and gave my own and new account Read & Write access and gave "everyone" No Access. I sellected on the bottom of the information window "apply to enclosed items".


Close the information window and log back in with your own account. Now you will have full access again.

After that you can delete the new made account.


Let me know if this works for you.

51 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 19, 2011 1:11 AM in response to Bob Grove

Hi there,


I had the exact same problem. Been trying to figure this one out for quite a while. But for me the following worked. Hope I can explain this clearly.


I've created a new user account on my mac, gave it administrator permissions. Logged out from my own account and logged in with the new.

After that I've accessed the iTunes folder of my own account. You can access this with the password of the new account.

Then I sellected the iTunes folder, "cmd i" and gave my own and new account Read & Write access and gave "everyone" No Access. I sellected on the bottom of the information window "apply to enclosed items".


Close the information window and log back in with your own account. Now you will have full access again.

After that you can delete the new made account.


Let me know if this works for you.

Oct 19, 2011 4:51 AM in response to whop77

Thanks for this.


I went ahead per your suggestion. So far so good although the problem is intermitant (was happening every other day or so) so will monitor for the week and report back here.


One thing that I should have mentioned prior was the permissions that are present when iTunes is opening. This is the list:


everyone - No Privileges Info

Fetching - Read & Write

my account - Read & Write

staff - Read Only

everyone - Read Only


When I went into the secondary account and made the modications - which are now only two (my account - Read & Write, everyone - No Access, what was strange is when I went to change the bottom "everyone" permission that was Read Only it immediately disappeared and the top "everyone" permission immediately changed from No Privileges ro Read Only. So it definately looks like something was wacked with this.


Your suggestion of creating the 'secondary' account to have the capability to change these permissions was a good one...


Btw, any idea what the Fetching permission is?

Oct 20, 2011 8:49 AM in response to Bob Grove

Same here... No I have zipped my iTunes Music Library and stored it somewhere else. After that deleted iTunes (the programme) completely. Downloaded a new version. And installed that.


Probably because I left the iTunes Library.itl file and the music in its original place, iTunes rebuild the library and made a new iTunes Music Library.xml file. My iTunes was complete after installing it new including playcounts and playlists. While I thought this was stored in the xml file...


So far everything is working fine again... but I will be carefull, lets see what happens the next few days...


If this doensn't help I am going to re-install my MacBook, because there is something seriously wrong with my permissions.

Oct 25, 2011 6:20 AM in response to whop77

Just wondering how you're making out after your last attempt you mentioned.


On my end, spent this weekend totally rebuilding my iTunes library which was quite a task. I started by deleting iTunes, the library, all Preference & Application Support, etc and then reinstalled everything from the ground up. Note I have all my music ~300K songs on two (2TB) external drive. Bottom-line is once I had all going, listening to some tunes and wham, the problem is still there. Did not have this problem until I upgraded to 10.7.2 and iTunes 10.5 so really thinking now there is more to this with respect to the recent upgrade that is causing this.

Oct 26, 2011 3:50 AM in response to Bob Grove

This is so frustrating. I've done the same. Only with 95K songs. Still a lot of work.

Last weekend I've totally re-installed my MacBook. Only adding my music to iTunes. Without using previous iTunes library files. I know I lost all my playlists, playcounts etc. But it would be worth it if iTunes would work right after this. But no luck...

After 7 songs or so, I got temp files and an error telling me that the iTunes file cannot me saved...


I have no idea what to do next exept maybe wait for an update that will fix the problem.

Just like you I've had this problem since my upgrade to 10.7.2

Oct 29, 2011 2:07 AM in response to Bob Grove

I have same problem. I really hope they fix this soon. I fixed this first by reinstalling iTunes. Then I discovered that just the file permissions on the itl file are somehow screwed. So I created a small shell script to run on terminal which fixes this by copying the itl file. I attach the source of the script here. It should be in the same folder as the itl file. Also cd that same folder before running the script. No guarantee, use at your own risk...


#!/bin/bash

DD=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`

FILENAME="iTunes Library.itl_"$DD

#echo $FILENAME

cp "iTunes Library.itl" "$FILENAME"

if [ -f "$FILENAME" ]

then

rm "iTunes Library.itl"

cp "$FILENAME" "iTunes Library.itl"

echo "Done..."

fi

Oct 29, 2011 7:07 AM in response to lemppari

Not sure I have something here - i tried resetting permissoins at the top level of my Music Folder and selected such that it would migrate down. I was getting this error at least 203 times a day but for theg past 2-days after doing this, had not had the error occur again. Note that this was even after I did a total new install of iTunes and my library (my media all resides on external drives). Anyway, so far so good after this but will have to monitor for a bit.

Oct 31, 2011 9:10 AM in response to Bob Grove

Just to let all know here, going on day five now and have not had the problem return after resetting the Music Folder permissions and having the same migrate throughout as mentioned above. Again, I the problem originally was happening 2-3 times per day so it looks like I've gotten this licked.


Side not on this, I originally set the permissions to be for 'myself' (as an Admin) for Read/Write and 'everyone' with read only. While the problem did not return, I started having an issue where if a modified an artowrk of an album, the change would not update in the grid no matter what I did. I remembered seeing 'staff' permissions on some files so went ahead and set 'Admin' (which from digging into this, 'staff' was what SL used for the Admin group but appears not to be used in Lion) to 'Read/Write'. After this, all good...

Nov 1, 2011 4:54 PM in response to whop77

****...After days of new issues, the problem returned again this morning!! Both the iTunes Library and iTunes Library.itl showing with unknown permissions.


To answer your question whop, yes when I rebuilt my entire library, I started afresh and rebuilt my .itl file with all the playlists, etc.


What is interesting with the problem I just noted now while writing this entry here, repaired permissions with Disk Utility and it corrected the unknown permission error. I cannot see anything in the report though (below) that ties to these specifically being repaired.


Not sure where to go with this....


Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/pt_PT.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/pt_PT.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/pt_PT.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/pt_PT.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/pt_PT.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/pt_PT.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/pt.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/pt.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/pt.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/pt.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/pt.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/pt.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/ru.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/ru.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/ru.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/ru.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/ru.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/ru.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/no.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/no.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/no.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/no.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/no.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/no.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/fi.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/fi.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/fi.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/fi.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/fi.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/fi.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj/UIAgent.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/Rem ote Desktop Message.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj/UIAgent.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreen.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj/MainMenu.nib”

Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj/MainMenu.nib”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are drw-r--r-- .

Repaired “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/Su pport/LockScreenLeopard386.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj/MainMenu.nib”


Permissions repair complete

Nov 9, 2011 7:19 AM in response to Mitchell Group

So I called applecare this morning and the problem is fixed... You are all correct it was permissions... First we went into terminal and


bash-3.2# chflags nouchg /Volumes/UltraMax

bash-3.2# chmod -N /Volumes/UltraMax

bash-3.2# chmod ug+x /Volumes/UltraMax


Ultramax is my external where 900gb of music is housed.


Then we highlighted itunes folder -get info and made sure under sharing and permissions it said you can read and write, unlocked the folder and applied..


then from finder- go to folder and type in /Users/Shared/SC Info take that folder and throw it in the trash


restart,, all is good...

iTunes 10.5: Permission issue with the iTunes Library file...

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