I am not sure what has happened, but when I attempt to open Itunes on my Mac the message "The iTunes Library file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file" appears.
Earlier when I was updating my Ipod the program stopped responding and wouldn't reopen. WHen I restarted my PC it wouldn't open still and displayed the message. Any ideas on how to get it going?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Scaredflyer21
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- DfwRevolution
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RE: Mac/Itunes Help
I'm a little confused: are you using Itunes on a Mac or a PC (or both)?
I have a three post per topic limit. You're welcome to have the last word.
RE: Mac/Itunes Help
If you haven't done this in a while, I'd repair permissions on your Mac. To do that, open Disk Utility (in Utilities in your Applications folder), select your disk, and click Repair Permissions. If that doesn't repair it, you may have to manually repair it via Get Info.
International Homo of Mystery
RE: Mac/Itunes Help
Quite strange...
Normally the iTunes library file is
iTunes also regularly writes out an XML copy of this file:
"~" selects your home folder.
(What are the iTunes library files?)
The message looks as if iTunes found at least one of these files unwriteable, either because they are write-protected or because they cannot be written to from your current user account. This might have happened after copying them from elsewhere or otherwise fiddling with the installation. Or something really weird may have happened.
You could open a terminal window (type "terminal" into Spotlight, it should be the top hit) and enter the following command:
(You could just copy and paste the line above.)
It will list all entries in long format so you can see the file permissions. It should look roughly like this:
<yourname> being the username you're logged in as.
The important bit is the "rw" at the beginning of each flag list, so your user (any programs you're running, such as iTunes) can read and write the iTunes library files.
If either the account and group names displayed are different from yours or the flags don't start with either drw or -rw something's wrong there and should be corrected. So what does it look like?
[Edited 2007-04-11 12:53:02]
Normally the iTunes library file is
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
iTunes also regularly writes out an XML copy of this file:
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
"~" selects your home folder.
(What are the iTunes library files?)
The message looks as if iTunes found at least one of these files unwriteable, either because they are write-protected or because they cannot be written to from your current user account. This might have happened after copying them from elsewhere or otherwise fiddling with the installation. Or something really weird may have happened.
You could open a terminal window (type "terminal" into Spotlight, it should be the top hit) and enter the following command:
ls -la ~/Music/iTunes/
(You could just copy and paste the line above.)
It will list all entries in long format so you can see the file permissions. It should look roughly like this:
drwxr-x--- 5 <yourname> <yourname> 340 Apr 11 03:34 .
drwx------ 7 <yourname> <yourname> 238 Sep 7 2005 ..
-rw-r----- 1 <yourname> <yourname> 6148 Nov 11 2003 .DS_Store
-rw-r----- 1 <yourname> <yourname> 9575296 Apr 11 03:34 iTunes Library
-rw-r----- 1 <yourname> <yourname> 9665526 Apr 11 03:34 iTunes Music Library.xml
<yourname> being the username you're logged in as.
The important bit is the "rw" at the beginning of each flag list, so your user (any programs you're running, such as iTunes) can read and write the iTunes library files.
If either the account and group names displayed are different from yours or the flags don't start with either drw or -rw something's wrong there and should be corrected. So what does it look like?
[Edited 2007-04-11 12:53:02]
RE: Mac/Itunes Help
| Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 2):
If you haven't done this in a while, I'd repair permissions on your Mac. |
That's normally just for dealing with incorrect permissions left by some less-than-perfect installers, but I doubt that any of them touched the iTunes library files...
Disk Utility (which performs that function) also doesn't know about the iTunes library files. I just checked, it wouldn't help there, neither with missing write permissions nor with incorrect user/group settings.
Directly looking at the files and correcting any aberrations manually should do the trick.
chmod u+rw ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
if the permission flags should be wrong and
sudo chown <yourname>:<yourname> ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
(you'd need to enter your password in order to confirm sudo)
if user and/or group shouldn't be correct.
edit: a.net has apparently garbled the output again... please insert a backslash character in front of the space between "iTunes" and "Library" for a correct path indication.
[Edited 2007-04-11 14:00:28]
RE: Mac/Itunes Help
| Quoting Klaus (Reply 4): Disk Utility (which performs that function) also doesn't know about the iTunes library files. I just checked, it wouldn't help there, neither with missing write permissions nor with incorrect user/group settings. |
Ah, good to know! I was under the impression that Disk Utility corrected permissions within one's Home folder, along with its other functions.
International Homo of Mystery
RE: Mac/Itunes Help
| Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 5): Ah, good to know! I was under the impression that Disk Utility corrected permissions within one's Home folder, along with its other functions. |
It does that, but as far as I'm aware it primarily looks at system plugins, applications and the like. Some of those may be installed only for certain users (they would reside in ~/Applications or ~/Library, for instance), but it seems to leave "ordinary" data files alone for the most part.
Permissions which need to be fixed are those which would allow malicious code to be executed with elevated privileges, which is why system plugins are especially critical. But user data are generally not problematic in this way - you "just" can't access them as you'd like if their permissions should be screwed up for whatever reason...
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- scaredflyer21
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RE: Mac/Itunes Help
Thanks for the replies! I tried everything, and it seemed to be normal (just as you all described), but it is still not working (displaying same message). Any more ideas?
Thanks!
Scaredflyer21
Thanks!
Scaredflyer21
RE: Mac/Itunes Help
Could you go to your iTunes settings in the "Advanced" tab and tell us what it says under "iTunes Music folder location"? (don't have the exact wording, I'm using a different language)
Are you using a Mac or a PC? What operating system?
Are you using a Mac or a PC? What operating system?
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