The iTunes Library file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file.

The "iphonestuffs4u" link does not take me to anything useful--only ads.

For me it did not help to change permission recursively. I created a new copy of the library file in Terminal:

$ cd ~/Music/iTunes

$ ls -l iTunes\ Library.itl*

-rw-r--r--@ 1 soren staff 22817000 7 Feb 19:34 iTunes Library.itl

$ cat iTunes\ Library.itl >iTunes\ Library.itl.new

$ mv iTunes\ Library.itl iTunes\ Library.itl.old

$ mv iTunes\ Library.new iTunes\ Library.itl

$ ls -l iTunes\ Library.itl*

-rw-r--r-- 1 soren staff 22817000 7 Feb 22:35 iTunes Library.itl

-rw-r--r--@ 2 soren staff 22817000 7 Feb 19:34 iTunes Library.itl.old

After that I was able to start up iTunes again.

hi.. i tried your solution but when i restart it, i could no longer log-in - only apple logo with spinning circle appears in the screen... please help :( thanks

Hey Folks- I had the same issues after I use the "Migration Assistant" to move my profile over.

I went through all the files that we "locked" and modified the permissions... no luck.

I did find a fix- http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2011/09/want-to-really-repair-permissions-on-your -mac-try-this/

Big thanks to Dwight silverman

iTunes 11.0.3 just gave a very long beach ball out of the blue, mid-operation while applying some album artwork on fresh cd imports. It was clear iTunes needed to be Force-Quit, after which it gave me the finger with the locked library thing, whenever I tried to reopen iTunes.

Rather than fiddle with permissions on the itl and possibly other files, I tried the suggestion from Luba (use Finder to navigate to user > music > itunes folder; get info, unlock, apply permissions to all content) , figuring something else might be locked somewhere in a sub-folder. Gave it a go. A few minutes later, iTunes is back and seemingly normal.

Thank you Luba !

luba petrusha

Re: The iTunes Library file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file.

Sep 2, 2012 8:30 PM ( in response to NAS65)

Try this--it seems to have worked for me: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/245774-itunes-folder-locked.htm l

From the site:

You can actually just fix those permissions.

1. Go to: Macintosh HD > Users
2. Right-click on your user name (home folder) and select Get Info.
3. Click the lock at the bottom and enter your password.
4. Your permissions at the moment for that folder should be Read & Write for you,Read only for staff and everyone.
5. Click the gear icon at the bottom, and select Apply to enclosed items.

The last step will take a few minutes to complete, but once done, everything in your home folder should now have their proper permissions.

I got the "locked library" message and spinning beachball twice, and had to force quit both iTunes and do a forced restart. Now everything seems to be running well.

Wanker! Ignore the top posting. They somehow engineered the question and reply. The site referenced is bollocks!

I have been in this situation, and while different solutions worked at different times, I accidentally found out that by double-clicking the iTunes Library.itl file, launches iTunes and unlocks the files.

Have tried it several times and has worked at all times up till now. My iTunes library is on an external drive.

Hope this helps somebody.

THIS WORKED FOR ME:

In the disk utility, select your hard drive, then select verify disk permissions. The process will take a few minutes to complete.

Then select repair disk permissions, and wait till it completes just like before. Then restart your mac. All your permissions will now have been verified and repaired. It's almost like defrag on pc, just much faster. .

I was having the same problem and I finally figured out why and worked out a fix. If you house your iTunes Library on an external drive, read on.

I use a Time Capsule set up as an AirPort Base Station for wireless network & Internet access. I have an external drive connected to the Time Capsule's USB port. My iTunes folder and all it's contents are located on this external drive.

In a seperate but now related issue, when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, I started having Adobe Illustrator trouble, whereby every time I tried to Save a file to the network, Illustrator would hang mid-save then freeze my whole system. This thread in Apple Support Communities led me to the only found solution, which involves connecting to the Time Capsule using the SMB sharing protocol (LAN address smb://10.0.1.1) as opposed to Apple's default AFP sharing protocol.

So, I began connecting via SMB (smb://10.0.1.1 in my Connect to Server menu) to curb the Illustrator Saving Issue. Meanwhile, I set up my iTunes library, directing my iTunes Media Folder Location in Preferences to a folder on the external drive. All was going well until one day I connected to the Time Capsule Sharepoint using the Time Capsule icon that showed up under "Shared" in my Finder sidebar, which by default uses the AFP sharing protocol (afp://Time_Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local OR afp://10.0.1.1). It was on this day that I received the error message that titles this discussion.

What I THINK I realized, is that if you house your iTunes Media Folder on an external HD, the sharing protocol used to connect to the Volume must remain consistent. Once I mounted the volume using the SMB address, the error message went away.

I now have the volume in my Login Items BOTH ways, which seems redundant, but everything works. If someone has a reason why this is a bad idea, let me know. I'm not sure of the advantages/disadvantages of AFP over SMB, but I guess I'm stuck connecting via SMB thanks to the Illustrator issue, and my iTunes setup.

Just got this message, after force quitting and restarting iTunes 11.1 (126) on OSX 10.8.5. Doing this in Terminal solved it for me:

$ cd /Users/<User>/Music/iTunes/

$ rm sentinel

where you replace "<User>" with your actual username.

Hope this helps. Cheers!

Deleting the iTunes folder from the Music on my mac helped.

None of those solutions worked for me.

What I found though was to Eject the mounted external Lacie and remount it again.

Wow, perfect answer, Luba. I felt a huge sigh of relief when it worked.

Thanks for sharing the information icerabbit.

That solved my problem!

Happy to hear that 🙂

It is great when we call share tips and tricks to solve some computer mysteries and bugs in various forums, and then hear back that somebody was able to fix their issue as well.