Ardour opens nonexistent sessions on unplugged HD

Installation & Configuration Mac OS X
#1

Greetings,

Here’s a weird one. Using my MacBook and OSX, I recorded a two sessions saved to an external Firewire drive. I recorded two guitar classes, and saved before closing. I could see the blue light on the hard drive flicker as I recorded. Days later, I tried navigating to them from my Linux partition on the same laptop, and they weren’t there. I booted in to OSX, and couldn’t find them on the drive from there, either. I opened JACK and Ardour, and, using the ‘Open Session’ tab, found them in my recent sessions. Closing the session, I tried searching for them with Spotlight and still couldn’t find them. I then unmounted and unplugged the drive, and used the ‘Open Session’ tab again, only this time I used the browse function to find where the sessions really were. The only path that worked was to the folder on the now-unplugged drive–file system/Volumes/[hard drive name]/[folder name]/[file name]. They both open fine.

How can I get Ardour to tell me the filepath it’s really using to get to the sessions? They can’t be where the browser says it’s browsing to, because it’s pointing to a drive that’s not even connected to the computer. I want to actually have them on that drive, so I can open them from my desktop.

This is not only frustrating, but also a little spooky.

–Paul

#2

Mrf! @.@

I posted a reply to this topic 2 days ago and until now it didn’t show up. So in short again…

I suggested while having the external HD unplugged move the files to a different folder than in the path of the mountpoint, then mount the HD, make sure it is properly mounted and move the files there “again”. Maybe the drive was somehow not mounted correctly. shrugs

#3

I don’t know where the files are. Spotlight cannot find them. How do I move them?

As an experiment, I started another session with the drive unplugged, and was able to save to it (according to the browser), record audio, close, and open it again.

And yes, disappearing posts have been a problem for me too.

–PD

#4

You wrote:

“I then unmounted and unplugged the drive, and used the ’Open Session’ tab again, only this time I used the browse function to find where the sessions really were. The only path that worked was to the folder on the now-unplugged drive–file system/Volumes/[hard drive name]/[folder name]/[file name]. They both open fine.”

So I assumed you found them… without spotlight. Huh?

Remember to have the external drive unmounted while looking for the files.

#5

OK, I’ll try to be clearer.

In Ardour, I click on the “Open Session” tab.

The “Recent” window lists all these sessions that I saved to the external drive, even though it’s not plugged in.

Below that, it says, Browse:

I click on that window, a new window opens. It looks like a basic file browser.

There are two panels; “Places” and “Name”. Under “Places”, there are 3 folders: “Pad” (my user name), “Desktop”, and “File System”.

I click on “File System”, and I get all the directories in the file system. In the “Names” panel, I click on “Volumes”. Then a list of two volumes appears: the Mac hard drive, and “PPA1.2”, the external drive THAT IS NOT PLUGGED IN. I have just browsed to a drive that is not connected to the computer in any way, which, as far as I understand, is not possible.

There are two folders, which contain sessions I have saved. I can open them. The browser is telling me they are located on PPA1.2, and I can navigate to them and open them. PPA1.2 is not accessable by this computer, but Ardour claims it is accessing it. Some of these sessions were made with the drive unplugged. But Ardour says they are on the drive.

Spotlight, of course, cannot find this drive, or any of the folders or files contained therein. It is not plugged into the computer.

If I plug this drive into another computer running Ardour, it cannot find any of these sessions, and they don’t show up if I use the file browser, either.

I would like to know where these files really are. The browser within Ardour is apparently messed up. The files are presumably somewhere on the Mac hard drive, but hidden from Spotlight. How do I find out where Ardour is hiding these files? How do I get it to really save sessions to PPA1.2?

Thanks,

PD

#6

Hello again,

[Edit: I found the files by mounting the Mac partition from Ubuntu Studio, on the same machine. The Linux file browser showed directories that the Finder did not, including Volumes>PPA1.2. How a folder with that name came to be on my laptop’s drive is still a mystery. Also mysterious is why neither Spotlight nor Finder had access to several layers of directories. I leave my original message in case someone can explain what happened.]

I wanted to bring this thread to the top again. I would like to uninstall Ardour so I can get the new native Mac version; this would erase the files that Ardour has hidden. I would like to back up these sessions before I do this. Even if I found the raw audio files, that would be fine; I don’t need to back up the whole session. Can anyone help me find them?

Right now, I have Ardour’s browser up. At the top, it says “Select Session File”. Below that, there’s a bar that indicates the directory path. It shows a hard drive icon (indicating “file system”, which I guess is the root directory), then >Volumes>PPA1.2>gfg>swing_7. “swing_7” is the folder for one of the hidden sessions. It contains the file, swing_7.ardour, which opens the session in Ardour if I click on it. If I enter swing_7.ardour into Spotlight, it says “No results found”. If I try to navigate in Finder, I don’t even see a directory called “Volumes”. I can’t navigate within Ardour, either. Any suggestions how to find and back up these files before uninstalling Ardour?

In the meantime, I want to try booting my Linux partition and mounting the Mac partition to search it. I guess now that I’ve installed Linux on the MacBook, I don’t really need the Mac version of Ardour anymore, but I’d still like to play with it :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Paul