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LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist

I get a lot of those entries in the console: lsd[364]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist


I have updated to El Cap from Mavericks. I have checked the disk with DiskUtility and DiskWarrior. All OK.


Checking this folder /private/var/db/lsd/ I found that it didn't exist. Created.

The file com.apple.lsdschemes.plist was created in this folder but I still get those messages in the Console!?

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014), OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 8, 2015 2:20 AM

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46 replies

Jul 10, 2017 9:56 AM in response to -__

Reasons to NOT use those commands:

  1. That 'chmod' makes the lsd directory and anything inside of it changeable by ANY process on the machine. That doesn't mean someone needs to hack into your system and target Launch Services intentionally. It means that a mostly-benign application written by a developer who ignores Apple's warnings not to rely on undocumented internal details (like how lsd works) could screw it up or a bug in a program that thinks it is doing something else can mangle or delete anything in the directory. There is almost never any problem on MacOS or any other Unix-like OS for which "chmod 777" is a reasonable solution.
  2. Simply using 'touch' to create the file creates a zero-byte (totally empty) file. A valid plist file cannot *EVER* be a zero-byte file. In the binary plist format, it will be 42 bytes. In the looser XML & NeXT (pre-XML) text formats, it will be longer. So that 'touch' command essentially creates a file that any code trying to parse a plist (in most cases that means OS functions) will see as corrupt.


I have 5 operational Macs which have run 10.11, all of which have logged this message in that part of their lives. It stopped with 10.12. The 3 that still run 10.11.6 all still intermittently log the message at irregular frequencies, mostly from the unprivileged instance of lsd. The 2 which have a /private/var/db/lsd/ directory complain the most, and on both the plist file exists in that directory but is a logically empty binary plist.


Most importantly, in the 18 months that I've run El Cap on one or more machines and seen this message repeatedly, I have never been able to correlate the message to any concrete failure. Everything Launch Services is supposed to do, it does correctly. Dumping the LS database yields a huge and seemingly complete set of registration data. In short: nothing is wrong except the logging.

Jan 6, 2017 9:23 AM in response to Francoisk

Older thread, so replying here, as it's one of the latest, but anyone involved please feel free to reply. The different solutions proposed in this thread vary considerably, and appear to work or not depending on the particular user configuration.


Recently upgraded to 10.11.6 on two machines and seeing these console messages. Created lsd directory and its plist--and done a number of other things, won't go into all the details--but still no joy. What puzzles me is that I have two machines, an iMac and Mini. The iMac, where I have not tried creating the directory and associated plist, gets maybe two or three of these logs per day, which I have no problem living with. The Mini, where I have created that directory and associated plist, gets spammed by this message almost every minute (the same amount of log spamming was occurring even before I created the directory and plist, so doing that didn't make anything worse.)


So question, does anyone know where and what is generating this lsd-identifiers file that need to be stored? Using FindAnyFile (as root), nothing comes up when I do a search for lsd-identifiers. Think this is a bug that Apple never resolved, but perhaps if I could harmlessly remove or disable whatever is generating them, I could at least reduce the amount of log spamming.

Oct 16, 2015 12:18 PM in response to manfredell

Same for me.


MacBook Air Mid2013 osx 10.11


I've reinstalled the system at least 3 times now, even from scratch (wipe out the primary HD and make a clean install) but after upgrading to El Capitan the log keeps filled by deny write and other messy messages. Moreover, the system is running quite unstable (app crashes and whatsoever...)


After a week digging around, I've no idea of what to do!


Hope someone will be luckier than me.

Oct 24, 2015 4:39 PM in response to tony.rasskazov

Hi all,


you should only create the directory /lsd with root user.


After a while I've seen the file com.apple.lsdschemes.plist created.


MacBook-Pro:~ root# cd /private/var/db/

MacBook-Pro:db root# mkdir lsd

MacBook-Pro:db root# ls -la lsd/

total 0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 68 Oct 25 01:31 .

drwxr-xr-x 71 root wheel 2414 Oct 25 01:31 ..

MacBook-Pro:db root# cd lsd

MacBook-Pro:lsd root# ls -lart

total 8

drwxr-xr-x 71 root wheel 2414 Oct 25 01:31 ..

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 42 Oct 25 01:32 com.apple.lsdschemes.plist

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Oct 25 01:32

Oct 25, 2015 5:01 AM in response to manfredell

Hi manfredell,


you're right. I've seen that some app uses the file correctly and some other no.


In my system I've found some of those messages but the last time used is after the messages. Probably we're facing a permission problem.


Try to live the file as is and check last update time ad messages, probably you will find the same situation. I'm trying to give permission also to wheel group not only to root user.


This will not help if there is a service that tries to write the file but from other users/groups than root:wheel


as you can see we have two lsd services so this is the problem.


lsd0,312,5040590<user>0 byte0 byte000 byte0 byte0 byte0 byte64 bit-NoNo0 byte0 byte0 byteNoNo0 byteNo
lsd0,013,1020183root0 byte0 byte000 byte0 byte0 byte0 byte64 bit-NoNo0 byte0 byte0 byteNoNo0 byteNo


last message:


25/10/15 05:54:58,250 lsd[590]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist


file status


MacBook-Pro:lsd root# ls -lart

total 8

drwxr-xr-x 73 root wheel 2482 Oct 25 03:52 ..

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 42 Oct 25 09:42 com.apple.lsdschemes.plist

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Oct 25 09:42 .

MacBook-Pro:lsd root#

LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist

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