Another infuriating day by a noob

[Deleted member 5784]

1. Copied my lightroom folders to the NAS via attached USB drive.

What are 'my LR folders'? Do you mean the LR catalogue or the media files (ie the photos) themselves?

2. Placed the files in my personal folder. Permissions checked and have full read/ write access.

What 'personal folder'? Do you mean your home folder on the NAS? Or is this a local folder on your Mac?

3. Setup Synology Drive. The LR catalogue is synced with my Mac (and PC beforehand).

Fine. but forget this for now. LR isn't working & we're trying to fix this.

4. Mounted the relevant NAS folders with SMB.

Good. In Mac Finder, can you click on the mounted share ion your NAS & see the media folders & the photo files inside them?

Mate - I have done that. I am just screenshotting where I pointed LR at. The folder structure in LR was matched to the NAS folder, as I've done a million time spreviously. It just isn't connecting.

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

And this worked first time with my Windows 11 laptop.

You may have done this a 'million' times, but I can see from yr screenshot that LR can't find the 'media' folder and its subfolders. Fix this first otherwise nothing subsequent matters.
Look, you're the one with the non-working LR. You keep using non-standard jargon to describe things that mean nothing to us technical folks who are trying to help, and you're clearly inexperienced with NASs / network shares etc. So, we have to spell the basics out very carefully in order to troubleshoot in a systematic way.
It's no good just repeating that you've tried x or y; we don't know beforehand what you've tried, and tbf whatever you've done so far clearly hasn't worked. If you just want to moan on here, then great; if you want someone to actually try and help then try following what is being suggested and you may make some progress.

 

[The Sorbz]

What are 'my LR folders'? Do you mean the LR catalogue or the media files (ie the photos) themselves?

What 'personal folder'? Do you mean your home folder on the NAS? Or is this a local folder on your Mac?

Fine. but forget this for now. LR isn't working & we're trying to fix this.

Good. In Mac Finder, can you click on the mounted share ion your NAS & see the media folders & the photo files inside them?


You may have done this a 'million' times, but I can see from yr screenshot that LR can't find the 'media' folder and its subfolders. Fix this first otherwise nothing subsequent matters.
Look, you're the one with the non-working LR. You keep using non-standard jargon to describe things that mean nothing to us technical folks who are trying to help, and you're clearly inexperienced with NASs / network shares etc. So, we have to spell the basics out very carefully in order to troubleshoot in a systematic way.
It's no good just repeating that you've tried x or y; we don't know beforehand what you've tried, and tbf whatever you've done so far clearly hasn't worked. If you just want to moan on here, then great; if you want someone to actually try and help then try following what is being suggested and you may make some progress.

Thanks for your help.

Let's go again:

LR Folders are my media files, so they are now in my home folder. The LR catalogue file is synced with Synology drive.

I can open the mounted network drive and open and see, read and write in this location.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

Thanks for your help.

Let's go again:

LR Folders are my media files, so they are now in my home folder. The LR catalogue file is synced with Synology drive.

I can open the mounted network drive and open and see, read and write in this location.

Cool. So you've moved your media files to the NAS, and can see / read / write to this top-level folder via MacOS Finder.

Bear with me - when you right click on the LR 'media' folder in your 3rd screen shot above and select 'Find missing Folder...' can you navigate to the mounted share, ie the same share we just accessed via Finder above, and then the 'media' folder on that share (I'm assuming when you moved your media files to the NAS, your top-level folder is still called'media'. If not, select whatever it is now called)? If so, what happens after you select the remote folder?

 

[The Sorbz]

Cool. So you've moved your media files to the NAS, and can see / read / write to this top-level folder via MacOS Finder.

Bear with me - when you right click on the LR 'media' folder in your 3rd screen shot above and select 'Find missing Folder...' can you navigate to the mounted share, ie the same share we just accessed via Finder above, and then the 'media' folder on that share (I'm assuming when you moved your media files to the NAS, your top-level folder is still called'media'. If not, select whatever it is now called)? If so, what happens after you select the remote folder?

Almost immediately after selecting the media folder it gives me the 'invalid path' error.

I think it may be something to do with the settings on the NAS, permissions or something like that.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

Ok no worries. We're going to create a permanent shortcut on the Mac to the share on the NAS that contains your photos.
Before we do this, you need to know 3 things:

- the username of a user account you set up on the NAS who has read & write pernissions to your photos share
- the name of the share on the NAS you created that contains your photos
- the IP address of your NAS. From your screengrab it looks like 192.168.1.100.

If you're not sure how to get these, let me know and i'll talk you through it.

Once we have this info, we'll create a permanent connection on your Mac to the share that contains your photos.

 

[The Sorbz]

So, I'm still at it!

Everything seems to be as per all the instructions. My drive is mounted and I can access it, In the Import dialogue the mounted drive is seen for import from and to, my profile has the correct permissions and it all seems fine.

What is not however is the catalogue Folder structure was originally done on a windows laptop and has other drives, which I had mounted in explorer. I think the syntax of the address may be incorrect and giving me a simple error. In other words, the address is incorrect.

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

Ok no worries. We're going to create a permanent shortcut on the Mac to the share on the NAS that contains your photos.
Before we do this, you need to know 3 things:

- the username of a user account you set up on the NAS who has read & write to your photos share
- the name of the share on the NAS you created that contains your photos
- the IP address of your NAS. From your screengrab it looks like 192.168.1.100.

If you're not sure how to get these, let me know and i'll talk you through it.

Once we have this info, we'll create a permanent connection on your Mac to the share that contains your photos.

• So I setup my user account (JimBob) with read & write to my photos share.
• All photos are in the 'media' folder, which is a sub-folder of the share
• IP address is correct.

Talk me through it please.

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

More screenshots for you

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

And a screenshot showing the LR import dialogue, clearly showing that LR can see the shared folders

 

[Deleted member 5784]

Ok it looks like you're actually storing your photos in your default home directory rather than a share you have specificlly created. This is fine; it probably explains some of the confusion though

1. Open Finder on Mac. Click on 'Go' on top menu, then 'Connect to server...'
2. In Address field at the top, type 'smb://JimBob@jimnas/homes/jimbob/'
3. If you're prompted for a username & password, its JimBob and the password you created for that account. Save credentials if prompted.
4. This should create an entry in the left hand Finder bar with the NAS name 'jimnas' aloing with an eject button, and the right hand pane should show a share called 'homes'. Put finder in column view, and click on the 'homes' entry. The next column should now show 'jimbob'. clicking on 'jimbob' should open another column with your top-level photos folder showing.
5. Drag and drop the 'jimbob' folder to the left hand shortcut bar in Finder to create a permanent shortcut to the 'homes/jimbob' share. You can connect and eject this in teh same way as an external drive.
6. Can you read & write the contents of the 'jimbob' share ok in Finder?

Now go into LR and point the right-click / 'Missing folders' dialogue at this newly created shortcut to the NAS.

Let us know what happens.

 

[The Sorbz]

OK. I thought I'd quit this catalogue and open a new one and import a file from the NAS share. It worked and I was able to do so. The catalogue file is on Synology Drive and the media file is on the mounted NAS drive.

My reasoning therefore is that the issue is within the address in the original folder structure but have no idea how to rectify it. I don't want to import all the files into the new catalogue and start again otherwise I'm going to lose thousands of edits.

Cheers,
Jim

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

Ok it looks like you're actually storing your photos in your default home directory rather than a share you have specificlly created. This is fine; it probably explains some of the confusion though

1. Open Finder on Mac. Click on 'Go' on top menu, then 'Connect to server...'
2. In Address field at the top, type 'smb://JimBob@jimnas/homes/jimbob/'
3. If you're prompted for a username & password, its JimBob and the password you created for that account. Save credentials if prompted.
4. This should create an entry in the left hand Finder bar with the NAS name 'jimnas' aloing with an eject button, and the right hand pane should show a share called 'homes'. Put finder in column view, and click on the 'homes' entry. The next column should now show 'jimbob'. clicking on 'jimbob' should open another column with your top-level photos folder showing.
5. Drag and drop the 'jimbob' folder to the left hand shortcut bar in Finder to create a permanent shortcut to the 'homes/jimbob' share. You can connect and eject this in teh same way as an external drive.
6. Can you read & write the contents of the 'jimbob' share ok in Finder?

Now go into LR and point the right-click / 'Missing folders' dialogue at this newly created shortcut to the NAS.

Let us know what happens.

As I stated previously and as it shows in the screenshots, I have successfully done all this. I honestly think it is an address syntax error but do not know how to rectify it.

 

[EAZ1964]

Can you check the folder permissions as well?
right mouse button in file station on the folder with the error on your nas:
On the bottom of the window you can see owner and group.
Do these match with the expected user name you are logging in from the mac?

If not you might go up and reset the owner and group on the whole folder tree using this same screen, but set the option that also includes sub folders and files.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

As I stated previously and as it shows in the screenshots, I have successfully done all this. I honestly think it is an address syntax error but do not know how to rectify it.

You're pre-empting again. Don't know what you mean by an 'address syntax error'. Did you follow my instructions above? The 'smb:...' command I posted is the correct file path to the home share where you have moved your content. You know this is correct because you can succesfully check the folders are read/writable and you can see your photo content.

If you have a working, mounted share on your Mac that correctly points to your media directory hierarchy, then you should be able to tell LR about the new location for the content by using the 'Find missing Folder...' dialgue.

 

[The Sorbz]

Can you check the folder permissions as well?
right mouse button in file station on the folder with the error on your nas:
On the bottom of the window you can see owner and group.
Do these match with the expected user name you are logging in from the mac?

If not you might go up and reset the owner and group on the whole folder tree using this same screen, but set the option that also includes sub folders and files.

Thanks,

It could be this as when I check in File Explorer it says the media folder is owned by my admin account as I set everything up with that.

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

You're pre-empting again. Don't know what you mean by an 'address syntax error'. Did you follow my instructions above? The 'smb:...' command I posted is the correct file path to the home share where you have moved your content. You know this is correct because you can succesfully check the folders are read/writable and you can see your photo content.

If you have a working, mounted share on your Mac that correctly points to your media directory hierarchy, then you should be able to tell LR about the new location for the content by using the 'Find missing Folder...' dialgue

I am not pre-empting at all. I redid the shares with your suggested syntax and it still did not work.

I have a working SMB share on my Mac that correctly points to my media directory. Telling LR about the new location using the 'Find Missing Folder' dialogue does not work in this case. It is another reason.

-- post merged: 12. Apr 2023 --

The change of ownership did not work.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

Fair enough. Are you using LR v12.2? There have been reports of bugs when using a NAS-based file hierarchy previously created on WIndows, on a Mac:

An internal error has occurred. Invalid Path error while finding raw folders on a NAS

Hi guys, oldtime Lr User here, but new to the forums. (My native language is spanish, so excuse me if my english is bad.) System Specs: LR Classic 12.2 release, Camera Raw 15.2 (Build 202302032259-eb84d255) on a 2013 Mac Pro 6-Core 3.5Ghz Xeon with 16 gigs of ram Running MacOS Monterey 12.6.3...

community.adobe.com

Test for this would be to downgrade to 12.1 & see if it fixes the issue.

 

[The Sorbz]

Fair enough. Are you using LR v12.2? There have been reports of bugs when using a NAS-based file hierarchy previously created on WIndows, on a Mac:

An internal error has occurred. Invalid Path error while finding raw folders on a NAS

Hi guys, oldtime Lr User here, but new to the forums. (My native language is spanish, so excuse me if my english is bad.) System Specs: LR Classic 12.2 release, Camera Raw 15.2 (Build 202302032259-eb84d255) on a 2013 Mac Pro 6-Core 3.5Ghz Xeon with 16 gigs of ram Running MacOS Monterey 12.6.3...

community.adobe.com

Test for this would be to downgrade to 12.1 & see if it fixes the issue.

Boom! That's it! Thanks for your help and I thought I was going mad. I've been using Lightroom for many years and never had thsi problem before.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[smellywolf]

I am getting sick of surfing through settings and options trying to find why I cannot achieve what I want. Grrrr!

I have a 923+ and want to use it to store my RAW files on to edit with Lightroom on my Mac Book. The catalog files are in Synology Drive and seen by LR as local so good. The media files are in an SMB share which can also be seen by LR.

My issue is that I have the missing files icon on all my folders and files and when I navigate to the NAS, which it can see, it always says 'Invalid file path'

Please help me from not throwing my Mac in the trash and setting fire to my NAS!!

Lightroom doesn't play well with remote libraries. The best solution involves using local smart previews. There are plenty of guides on how to do this properly.

 

[The Sorbz]

Lightroom doesn't play well with remote libraries. The best solution involves using local smart previews. There are plenty of guides on how to do this properly.

See above. I am not running LR from a remote library but one in Synology Drive, which works well. It was an issue with the latest LR version, so I went back to that and it works well now.