Create, open and Save Pro Tools Session Issue

[Gemstone]

I'm experiencing a similar problem and get the same permissions denied message, even after switching to AFP. I'm using Pro Tools 2018.4 with OS High Sierra on a single computer, and no peripherals or other devices connected. It will not let me create a new file in the same location where my old files were stored previously, which was under Macintosh hd/applications/avid/protools. When I first tried creating a new file, I noticed in the location bar at the bottom of the startup dashboard that it was being saved to a new location, somewhere in Documents and it would save the session in that location. (on a side note, in case it matters, because of other related software I'm trying to get to work in protools, I recently went to PT set-up/preferences/operation and noticed that the location for User Media and Settings was all set to various location under Documents, but don't know if that's normal or not). Anyway, I switched the location on the PT startup dashboard to the above mentioned applications/avid/protools because I wanted all my sessions in one location, the location where they used to automatically be saved, and the problem of permission being denied when trying to create a new session started up immediately thereafter. Since the permissions section was removed from Disc Utility app, I did also tried a couple of work around techniques for resetting permissions but those techniques didn't help--perhaps there's another way. If anyone has further suggestions, I would be grateful. I would very much like to be able to create new files and save them in one spot. If I can't get a solution in this thread, I may have to create a separate thread. Thanks!

[heysimo]

Hi,

I'm bumping this old thread cause I have the very same issue but activating AFP did not do the trick for me.
I have two macbooks, identical, both with Mojave and both with the same setting.
If I try to access the studio mac from the first macbook, it works perfectly.
With the second one, I get the "another user as this session open already..." ecc. I mean, the problem described above.

The only difference is that on the first mac (the working one) there is a Pro Tools 2019 license, on the second one, Pro Tools 2018.4.

Any ideas? what am I missing?
thanks

[yoann]

Hello,

I am also bumping this old thread, because we are upgrading our olds MacPros (5,1) from Sierra to High Sierra (last OS Supported without Metal Graphic Card, and oldest supported OS certified with Protools 2020).

We are used to share session from one MacPro to another, but since upgrading, we have the same issue described in this thread.

Turning off SMB do the trick, but then we cannot access system drive (converted to APFS when upgraded), and PCs on the network cannot access Mac.

Did someone find another workaround than turning off smb ?

Best,

Yoann

Configuration : Mac Pro 5,1, Mac OS 10.13.6, Protools Ultimate 2020.5, HDX & HD Native, sessions on HFS+ internal (sata) disk, permissions ignored on those disks.

[falcowe]

Originally Posted by yoann

Hello,

I am also bumping this old thread, because we are upgrading our olds MacPros (5,1) from Sierra to High Sierra (last OS Supported without Metal Graphic Card, and oldest supported OS certified with Protools 2020).

We are used to share session from one MacPro to another, but since upgrading, we have the same issue described in this thread.

Turning off SMB do the trick, but then we cannot access system drive (converted to APFS when upgraded), and PCs on the network cannot access Mac.

Did someone find another workaround than turning off smb ?

Best,

Yoann

Configuration : Mac Pro 5,1, Mac OS 10.13.6, Protools Ultimate 2020.5, HDX & HD Native, sessions on HFS+ internal (sata) disk, permissions ignored on those disks.

I’ve had a similar issues when running a project off of an unRAID server. It always ends up being a permissions issue when I’ve had the problem. I either have to do one of two things. Either fix the permissions on the share and then try again (sometimes solved the issue) or I created the session while not logged into the server as the authorized user and so I think I corrupted the folder/session by using it while not logged in as the authorized user. If that is the case I have to either save the session as or import the session data into a new session to fix the permissions issue.

On another note, I don’t believe AFP can be accessed from a Windows machine. So turning off SMB fixed the issue? So you can access your APFS drives via AFP on the network? That section of your post is rather confusing.

I’ve also had poor ProTools performance on SMB shares that are running on HDDs, and I’ve had usable results from a single SSD (all on my same unRAID server as mentioned above).

[falcowe]

Originally Posted by yoann

Hello,

Configuration : Mac Pro 5,1, Mac OS 10.13.6, Protools Ultimate 2020.5, HDX & HD Native, sessions on HFS+ internal (sata) disk, permissions ignored on those disks.

Sorry I didn’t notice the config until I pressed submit on my reply. To add to the permissions “solution” to try. I’d bet that the fact you have permissions ignored on the relevant disks may be either causing, or adding to the error. With no permissions I bet that ProTools (or something) as assuming permissions are there and just can’t find them. Alternatively since there are no permissions, when you are accessing the disks over the network via SMB (I’m assuming accessing with the Admin credentials of the “host” computer) it’s expecting to see those admin creds and when they aren’t there ProTools freaks out... or something.

[RyanC]

Did anyone ever get this working with SMB? I'm trying to access a mac server with High Sierra on it from a windows 10 client. I have other macs and can access the server just fine with PT with SMB turned off. But once it's turned on it has this problem. Obviously, the win10 can't connect with SMB off.

I need to figure out a way to get this w10 machine access to the server, is there any other network protocols that I could install on both the mac and the PC? Did anyone get this working with NFS protocol between macs and win?

It's annoying because this IS a PT problem. I can enable SMB and finder, explorer, logic, ableton and studio one on both platforms (except logic/win obv) can all write on the mac server. Only PT has this issue.

[falcowe]

Originally Posted by RyanC

Did anyone ever get this working with SMB? I'm trying to access a mac server with High Sierra on it from a windows 10 client. I have other macs and can access the server just fine with PT with SMB turned off. But once it's turned on it has this problem. Obviously, the win10 can't connect with SMB off.

I need to figure out a way to get this w10 machine access to the server, is there any other network protocols that I could install on both the mac and the PC? Did anyone get this working with NFS protocol between macs and win?

It's annoying because this IS a PT problem. I can enable SMB and finder, explorer, logic, ableton and studio one on both platforms (except logic/win obv) can all write on the mac server. Only PT has this issue.

Oof, that sounds like that is going to be a pain. I certainly didn't solve my issue unfortunately, but I have been able to run session successfully off of my unRAID server connected via SMB on my Mac. But I gave up on the dream of running off the server primarily and just use that as active archive for projects, and have moved to internal SSDs for projects. If I recall correctly I was able to run system wide permissions fix (re-write) for my unRAID server and that tended to solve the issue. But I sadly didn't find a fool proof way. And going from Windows to a Linux distro (well OSX) might be even more of a pain than it is worth.

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you are accessing the SMB share on a static IP with admin credentials. And signing in every single time. Other than that, best of luck to you!

[RyanC]

Originally Posted by falcowe

Oof, that sounds like that is going to be a pain. I certainly didn't solve my issue unfortunately, but I have been able to run session successfully off of my unRAID server connected via SMB on my Mac. But I gave up on the dream of running off the server primarily and just use that as active archive for projects, and have moved to internal SSDs for projects. If I recall correctly I was able to run system wide permissions fix (re-write) for my unRAID server and that tended to solve the issue. But I sadly didn't find a fool proof way. And going from Windows to a Linux distro (well OSX) might be even more of a pain than it is worth.

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you are accessing the SMB share on a static IP with admin credentials. And signing in every single time. Other than that, best of luck to you!

Yeah I gave up on NFS.

So if I understand correctly, if the server is windows, so SMB only, and the workstations are windows as well, this will still be a problem?

Man this kind of crap makes me wish I could just reject PT all together. If I can't do that at least I can inch away from Avid year after year. About ready to just freeze my PT|U licenses. They aren't offering me anything anyway...

[RyanC]

Originally Posted by falcowe

Oof, that sounds like that is going to be a pain. I certainly didn't solve my issue unfortunately, but I have been able to run session successfully off of my unRAID server connected via SMB on my Mac. But I gave up on the dream of running off the server primarily and just use that as active archive for projects, and have moved to internal SSDs for projects. If I recall correctly I was able to run system wide permissions fix (re-write) for my unRAID server and that tended to solve the issue. But I sadly didn't find a fool proof way. And going from Windows to a Linux distro (well OSX) might be even more of a pain than it is worth.

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you are accessing the SMB share on a static IP with admin credentials. And signing in every single time. Other than that, best of luck to you!

So the weird thing is, at least as far as I have tested it, windows can open PT sessions on a windows SMB server with no problems. It's going to take some messing with the connections (currently have 56GbE-win only, 10GbE mac/win and 1G mac/win and 5g/2g wireless mac/win), but once or twice I got mac SMB to open sessions from the windows server (osx client) without this error.

I'm setting up a proper windows 2019 server in the next week or two and will isolate it from all WAN and limit to only 56G and 10G.

FWIW- as an audio computer, in every conceivable way, the AMD 5950x DESTROYS a mac pro 7,1 (and m1 in sigle core low latency). The 5950x/zen3 is the native we have all be waiting for. Windows is a bitch with networking though (I think my problem is 20h2, and all the crap I'm trying to do, but not easy to fix, prefer OSX here).

The biggest downfall to PT on the 5950x is high DPI/4k and the lack of 16 sample buffers (and 32 at 96k).

[RyanC]

Originally Posted by falcowe

Other than that, best of luck to you!

Hey I just thought I would post an update to this, because I have been able to get both mac and win to work-

What's working is a windows 2019 server with an SMB share (and SMB direct/RDMA/RoCE 56gbe via hpe/mellanox cards).

On the macs, this just works with SMB enabled and logging in as admin.

In the windows machines, I get an error 'this drive is not designated as a recording drive' when loading directly from the share. But if I make a persistent symbolic link, using mklink in cmd run as admin, it works.

I need to do a little more testing before I'm going to be ready to take my old server (hackintosh) offline. I got a supermicro H12SSL for the new server and I'm very pleased with it.