Photos.app: library is damaged ... move it to the trash

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Level 3

889 points

Photos.app: library is damaged ... move it to the trash

I just moved my daughter's library from Aperture/iPhoto to Photos.app so she could use her iPhone to triage her library. I'm on Yosemite.

After starting the conversion I ended up with the usual two libraries, one from Aperture and one for Photos.app. Photos opened well and closed well. If I tried launching by clicking on the Library though I got a horrid error message. Something like "library is damaged" and "should move it to the trash". No sign of hope.

It was a bug of course. The Library was fine. On inspection the 'default' app was Photos.app, but the launching app was actually iPhoto. The error message, however, was coming from Photos.app.

So iPhoto tried to open the library, couldn't (of course), but Photos.app showed the error message.

Yeah, that's messy. Looks like some kind of launchservices bug. I used context menu to tell Yosemite to always open in Photos.app. Error resolved.

Posted on Mar 1, 2016 10:36 AM

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Answer 1

jfaughnan Author

Level 3

889 points

Mar 2, 2016 10:19 AM in response to jfaughnan

Interestingly I got the same horror message when I tried to open a migrated library using Aperture. Again the fix was to bypass the usual file open procedure and choose open with then navigate to the app. I'll try rebuilding my launch database.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,495 points

Mar 2, 2016 10:36 AM in response to jfaughnan

Interestingly I got the same horror message when I tried to open a migrated library using Aperture.

To open a migrated library you can also simply change the filename extension of the library back from ".migratedaplibrary" to ".aplibrary". The filename extension seems to be the only thing that is changed, when a library is migrated to Photos.

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Answer 3

jfaughnan Author

Level 3

889 points

Mar 2, 2016 10:37 AM in response to léonie

I wonder if this bug is due to a conflict between how the Mac interprets ownership based on file extension vs. extended attributes, etc.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,495 points

Mar 2, 2016 10:57 AM in response to jfaughnan

That is a possibility.

I think it is a poor implementation of the migration to Photos. If we click the migrated library again, the default should be to launch the original application that created the library and not to open it again in Photos.

Apple's support document is not very helpful: If Photos won't open a library that you already migrated - Apple Support

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