Marv,
Let's try repairing your catalog database. Be sure you have quit Photo Mechanic Plus before following the instructions below.
Repairing a corrupt database:
Launch the Terminal.app (in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder) on your Mac. Type the following and add a trailing 'space' character:
cd
Then from the Finder, find your Catalog folder and drag and drop it onto the Terminal window. The path to the Catalog folder should autocomplete.
Switch back to the Terminal window and press 'return' on your keyboard. Next type:
sqlite3 catalog.pmdb
The prompt should now display sqlite> to indicate you’re in the SQLite shell. To verify that you’re truly suffering from database corruption, type the following command into the shell:
sqlite> PRAGMA integrity_check;
Press 'return'. Don't forget the semi-colon. This may take a while if your database is large. If the response is anything other than ok, the database needs to be repaired.
Doing the Repair:
We need to dump the data into an external file and re-create the database manually. Enter the following commands into the SQLite shell, pressing 'return' after each line:
sqlite> .mode insert
sqlite> .output dump_all.sql
sqlite> .dump
sqlite> .exit
Now that we have the dump, let’s import it. You should now be out of the SQLite shell and back to the Terminal prompt. Enter and execute the following statements:
mv catalog.pmdb catalog.orig.pmdb
sqlite3 catalog.pmdb < dump_all.sql
sqlite3 catalog.pmdb
The first line above will move the original database out of the way. The second line will create a new one in place, using the dump we just exported. The last line should take us back into the SQLite shell in order to check if everything’s okay.
Run the integrity check one more time and we should see ‘ok’ as the response this time:
sqlite3> PRAGMA integrity_check;
ok
Type the following and then you can quit the Terminal application:
sqlite3> .exit
If the recovery succeeded, then you should be able to use Photo Mechanic Plus again and attempt the catalog re-index.
HTH,
-Kirk
