Hi Christophe --

Becky passed along the log file you generated and I have one idea for you to try. The main error backtrace in the log indicated that Lightroom was unable to create a subfolder in your Preferences directory.

Could you try navigating in Finder to the Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom folder and hit Cmd + I (Get Info) and tell me what it says in the "Sharing and Permissions" section of the info panel. I saw one isolated case of a module switching error like this where (somehow) the Lightroom settings folder had been locked down with read only permissions. Once those permissions were set back so that the user's account had write access to the folder, all was well again.

This may work for others on the thread, though I think there is another bug impacting at least some others. I'm still trying to figure out how the error in the other log file was occurring.

DT

Hmm. Those permissions sound correct. I'll have to see what other reasons would prevent creating a directory there.

In the Lightroom settings directory, do you see other sub-folders like Develop Settings, etc? Can you create a new folder inside via the Finder without an error?

DT

DanTull wrote:

 

Could you try navigating in Finder to the Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom folder and hit Cmd + I (Get Info) and tell me what it says in the "Sharing and Permissions" section of the info panel. I saw one isolated case of a module switching error like this where (somehow) the Lightroom settings folder had been locked down with read only permissions.

A completely off-the-wall thought...  Any or all of you have Nik software installed?  I've seen cases in the past where LR launches without modules, and it's turned out to be because Nik's created the Lightroom folder to install its plug-ins long before LR's on the computer.  It's probably not related, but worth ruling out anyway.

DanTull wrote:

 

Aha... if that folder was created by the Nik installer (which is probably run as root), that might explain the one-off case of this I saw with a 3.0 user at one point. I was wondering what could cause that...

Ah, never thought of root!  Sounds like you've sussed it for the install problems (you wouldn't believe how many times I've reported that one!) even if not for this issue. Nice one!

Bingo!!!!

Ok, try copying this folder from the clean user account to your normal user account:

Macintosh HD / Users / [your username] / Library / Application Support / Adobe / Lightroom /

And then try LR in your normal account.

I would.  Let's get it working properly, and then you can move your personal presets into the new folders.

Easy way is to open Finder, hold down Opt key and it'll appear in the Go menu.  I drag it to the sidebar for easy future access.

Julie, try copying over 2 more files.  Macintosh HD / Users / [your username] / Library / Preferences / com.adobe.Lightroom4.plist  and   Macintosh HD / Users / [your username] / Pictures / Lightroom / Lightroom 4 Catalog.lrcat (or whatever your catalog's called)

Weird. If you go into Lightroom preferences and in the presets tab click the "Show Lightroom Presets Folder...", is it the same (empty) folder?

Maybe I didn't indicate the right folder or wasn't entirely clear. I'd think if there were no folders that it'd be more than just the book module that's failing.

DT

Hmm. I'd be interested to see the tracebacks log output from this newly more pervasive module switching error.

It would also be interesting to know which of the preferences or the catalog is the differentiating factor in getting this error.

DT (dtull at adobe.com)

Yep, I received your log and Julie's as well. They have some similar looking errors in them that give me a couple of new leads.

I think we have a few different bugs in the mix. Hopefully with a little more time poring over the logs and the code I can spot what is triggering these errors.

Thanks for the info (and for bearing with us on this!) -- DT

Can you run this command in Terminal.app?

echo $USER && find ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Lightroom/ -type d -maxdepth 2 -exec ls -ld {} \;

Basically, it's going to emit your username and the names and permissions of the top few levels of folders in that tree. I suspect that simply moving the folder between accounts could leave things in a state that's likely to be invalid and possibly prevent LR from accessing/modifying the contents.

Thanks -- DT

Oh, yeah. That's the bug I've seen before all right. Those folders are owned by root with a group matching your username and they are only writable by the user (not the group or other) so Lightroom (which runs with your user permissions) isn't allowed to create anything inside there.

sudo chown -R $USER ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Lightroom/

sudo chgrp -R staff ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Lightroom/

This should set the whole tree to be owned by your user account and the (more typical, I think) group "staff". The permissions themselves seem correct, it's the ownership that's messed up. Note that the first one will prompt you for the password for your user account and that account will have to have admin rights to take ownership away from root.

It definitely looks like an installer created the "External Editor Presets" folder with incorrect permissions and left this trap for LR to fall into (which failed to present a useful error message). When I saw it before, I didn't make the connection with the installer (thanks, Victoria for pointing that one out).

DT

Awesome! Note for others on the list, I don't know that these instructions will work for everybody (the logs showed another bug which I think is distinct), but in the case where they don't it shouldn't do any harm. The commands are just setting the owner and group to what they should be anyway.

I'm still hunting for that one. Also, I'm going to work on getting a bug for a better error message, a tech note for correcting the problem, and maybe track down somebody from Nik software to see about tweaking their installer to avoid creating this condition.

DT