Filed under: iLife, Software, Troubleshooting
iPhoto 8.0.3 updater bug bites many
Yesterday I tried to open up iPhoto '09, and was greeted with a screen telling me that my iPhoto library needed to be updated. This was sort of odd, since I had run the program many times since the software update of June 4th bringing the program to version 8.0.3, but what the heck. I clicked on upgrade and the program crashed displaying one of the wonderfully unclear error screens of hex numbers.After trying all the usual things like rebooting, resetting the PRAM and saying 'Candyman' three times in front of a mirror, I sheepishly gave up and called Apple. It turned out that this has been happening to many people. Up until two days ago, Apple had been capturing reports to find the source. I was told that they stopped capturing reports when they numbered around 3,000.
What Apple found was a bug in the 8.0.3 updater, and apparently the bug could bite just about anytime since it didn't necessarily rear its head directly after the update. The bug, in various incarnations with various solutions, is to be cursorily found in the support forums, but here is the authorized Apple fix:
Hold down the option key as you boot iPhoto and you'll see a screen like the one displayed here. Just choose your library (there should only be one) and iPhoto will boot normally. Problem solved! As of now the problem hasn't resurfaced for me, and according to Apple tech support, it shouldn't. This bug will be squashed in a future iPhoto update but for now it's easy to get around. 
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mitch said 6:54PM on 6-13-2009
Thanks for posting this info.
I was unable to open iPhoto after installing the update and wasn't looking forward to troubleshooting the problem.
I wasn't too worried since I had several backups. I try and wait at least a few days before doing the updates to prevent this type of problem from happening to me. I, also, use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my hard drive before updating (in addition to the ongoing Time Machine backups).
I followed your directions and they worked. However, I did have 2 iPhoto Libraries listed. I chose the one that was listed as default.
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David Winograd said 11:44PM on 6-13-2009
Mitch,
Unfortunately waiting a few days before applying the update wouldn't have prevented you from this one. I think the update came out on June 4th and it stung me on the 12th.
Usually I'd agree with you, but there are exceptions. I wonder if having the problem depended on certain things happening at certain times. Where it hit me was in Photo Booth when I wanted to put a shot I just took into iPhoto. Bam!!!
But from what I've heard, this hardly affected everyone. Just we, the lucky, I guess...
krbanton said 7:07PM on 6-13-2009
I had the same problem last week (before seeing this article) - thus I fixed it in a different way. I rebuilt my iPhoto library using iPhoto Library Manager from http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/. It did the trick for me.
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Galley said 7:12PM on 6-13-2009
I have also used iPhoto Library Manager in the past to save my bacon.
Mike McKenzy said 8:11PM on 6-13-2009
I had this issue. I navigated to my iPhoto Library, Viewed the package contents, deleted the Upgrade_Temp folder. Problem REALLY solved. Have not had an issue since.
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Joanna D said 8:13PM on 6-13-2009
So much for "it just works".
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Jagger said 11:32PM on 6-13-2009
So much for a troll free blog.
Every OS has bugs. Not every company fixes them, but Apple does.
VanillaSpice said 10:39PM on 6-14-2009
So much for "Welcome to the Social".
or "Coke Adds Life".
or "Easy As Dell".
Shock, horror. Sometimes, the slogans that companies use do not 100% reflect reality. So much for caveat emptor.
motoxo said 8:26PM on 6-13-2009
good informative post. thank you.
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nicleT said 8:41PM on 6-13-2009
No issue with this update here. But I'm also using iPhoto Library Manager so maybe it just helped to keep the current iPhoto library's path definition straight?
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Eric Warnke said 8:48PM on 6-13-2009
8.0.3 restored about 6 of my 2K+ library that iPhoto '09 would never display. They were valid jpeg's exported from lightroom and ever with different jpeg encoding levels iPhoto would not display them.
Thankfully I didn't have the disappearing library trick.
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Dr. Spaceman said 8:51PM on 6-13-2009
You can't even drag maps anymore in Places. All it does is drag a map tile around. This is so annoying.
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MacSlut said 11:25PM on 6-13-2009
Dr. Spaceman, "You can't even drag maps anymore in Places."
I ran into that bug, and had to delete my com.apple.iPhoto.plist file located at ~/Library/Preferences/.
You might want to back up this file instead of deleting it as it contains all of your iPhoto preferences, but it fixed everything for me.
my89z24 said 12:12AM on 6-14-2009
My guess is it happens if you install the update but don't start iPhoto right away. What happened to me is I installed the update and then later recorded a video using photo booth and told it to add it to iPhoto which then launched and started giving me the error described. I restored from backup and then started iPhoto and then did the video import, worked fine.
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David Winograd said 12:41AM on 6-14-2009
Yup, just about the same thing happened to me.
When Photo Booth was trying to open iPhoto the problem occurred.
I wonder if we have a pattern here.
Has anyone who has experienced this been anywhere around Photo Booth when iPhoto exploded?
nbidgood said 12:53AM on 6-14-2009
i also had the delayed "library update" message several days (and a few openings of iphoto) after installing the update. however, my library updated without issue. in fact, it updated quite fast, considering i have 13,000+ photos in my library.
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anthony77 said 1:54AM on 6-14-2009
This is a content issue in your iPhoto Library, and it happens to people all the time, it could be a misplaced album or folder in the library package has been opened, or it could be a video clip from your camera or even a plug in with iPhoto could do the trick as well... I wouldn't say this is a bug just because you had to rebuild your library... 99 out of 100 times as a tech support agent for Apple, the issue is always content, and it sounds like this is the case by what you described... don't blame software unless you rooted everything else out... just my two cents...
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malexandria said 8:00AM on 6-14-2009
I think there's a bug in iTunes after the last Update, I'm no longer able to Consolidate my entire Library, I went to Consolidate yesterday and it craps out half way through the process, my library is now a broken mess.
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Mark said 12:40PM on 6-14-2009
There's another isue with this: in the top level directory under "iPhoto Library", "Data" used to be a directory by itself. Now it is a symlink pointing to the directory "Data.noindex". This breaks iDisk synching. If you run with your iPhoto library based on your iDisk, iDisk will fail to synch, as that file system does not support symlinks.
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kirkv said 3:54PM on 6-14-2009
The iDisk sync failure is also deceiving in that you will get a message saying "there was a problem publishing the album" from iPhoto saying that your MobileMe account information is incorrect when you try to access an published photo album. Even signing out of MobileMe and trying again with the correct login info doesn't seem to fix the issue.
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