Version 2015.2.1 has the potential t corrupt the LR catalog

[clee01l]

After updating to LR 2015.2.1 I started getting problems starting LR and exiting LR I could only exit LR using the Force Quit.option in OS X. Once when restarting LR I got a Message that the catalog was in an unstable state (a very worrisome message to receive BTW) Below is the gist of the conversation I've had on Adobe forums.
Note the response from the "Sr. Computer Scientist" (highlighted in blue)

The Link to the Adobe thread is here
[h=1]Lightroom: CC 2015.2.1 on MacOS 10.11 crashes on start up Won't exit when it does start.
[/h]

I updated LR2015.1 to 2015.2.1 after downgrading 2015.2 back to 2015.1.
2015.2.1 crashed every time it starts and thens can be restarted after the initial crash. When Exiting, LR does not exit and I must force quite each time to get out of the too after waiting as much as 15 minutes for the program to exit normally.
Often I need to clear the lock file to restart LR.

Why not pull the 2015.2.x update UNTIL you have thoroughly tested the new code and quit forcing loyal users to bug test your code.

Version Lightroom version: CC 2015.2.1 [ 1046594 ]

• OK, this is an issue still being investigated by the Lightroom team. They couldn't get to the bottom of it quickly enough for the 6.2.1 update, but are still working to figure it out.
  
  I sent a note to the engineer working on it, in case he needs more information from you to help narrow it down.
  
  
  
• Cletus Lee
  Who made the decision that releasing a known flawed compile was better than not releasing any fix? Pretty damned stupid. I've gone from a poorly functioning LR version 2015.2 to a non functioning LR version 2015.2.1 that leave my catalog in an unstable state. I think you need to warn LR users that the potential is there that LR2015,2,1 can corrupt their LR catalog. I will certainly see that people on LR Forums.net are aware that potential for a corrupt catalog exists.
  
  

 

[Skeeter]

thanks for the heads up

 

[Johan Elzenga]

This is getting more and more ludicrous. The Lightroom team seems to be completely out of control.

Do you let Lightroom make a catalog backup on quit? I had to force quit too a few times (without issues with the catalog so far), but it was always after Lightroom made a catalog backup. If I quit Lightroom and tell it to skip the backup this time, everything seems to be fine. As I make other backups anyway, I decided to just skip Lightroom backups for the time being.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Very pleased that I refrained from updating the OS on my Mac.....it seems pretty obvious that most of the stability issues centre around Lightroom running under El Capitan. As I said in another thread, I'm not seeing any such problems when running 6.2 or 6.2.1 on Mavericks and Windows 10.

 

[LouieSherwin]

Very pleased that I refrained from updating the OS on my Mac.....it seems pretty obvious that most of the stability issues centre around Lightroom running under El Capitan. As I said in another thread, I'm not seeing any such problems when running 6.2 or 6.2.1 on Mavericks and Windows 10.

An old adage. How do you know who the pioneers are? They are the ones with all the arrows stuck in them.

I never go to the first release. At a minimum I wait until the x.1 is out and there are not any reports of serious problems. That way I all I miss is some potential pain.

-louie

 

[Johan Elzenga]

But if everybody would be like that, version x.1 would never arrive...

 

[clee01l]

Very pleased that I refrained from updating the OS on my Mac.....it seems pretty obvious that most of the stability issues centre around Lightroom running under El Capitan. As I said in another thread, I'm not seeing any such problems when running 6.2 or 6.2.1 on Mavericks and Windows 10.

So far turning off the New OS X feature labeled "Automatically hide and show the menubar" seems to have helped eliminate the crash on start up. I'm still working on the LR hang on exit issue and may have something to report there soon.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

So far turning off the New OS X feature labeled "Automatically hide and show the menubar" seems to have helped eliminate the crash on start up. I'm still working on the LR hang on exit issue and may have something to report there soon.

I spoke too soon. I just had a lockup on quit too, even though I did not let Lightroom make a catalog backup. I'm fed up with this, so I downgraded my version back to CC2015.1.1. :-(

 

[LouieSherwin]

But if everybody would be like that, version x.1 would never arrive...

True, but there are plenty of those who just can't wait.

I hope that the takeaway for end users from this incident is to learn to maybe more deliberate about managing their risks. It is probable prudent to avoid new releases if you are about to start an important project. Even then you should always have complete backups before making any significant changes.

-louie

 

[clee01l]

When Adobe was operating on a 15-18 month version update cycle, Adobe would release a public beta of the next version BUT with one specific qualification. You could not convert your production catalog to the new version. With the production data safely running in the old version there was little chance that you could corrupt the production catalog and at the same time Adobe got a lot of free user testing on the new version to work out the bugs. With the advent of Lightroom Mobile and LRCC/6, they stopped this public beta. (At least they stopped calling it a beta) and released a very buggy version 6.0 and now 6.2 as production, putting customers production data at risk to any undiscovered bugs.

 

[clee01l]

What I have found that works (for Me)

For everyone running OS X 10.11
Apple has not released any bug fix yet. Yet 10.11.1 was a beta release not included when ElCapitan was released to the public. What I'm seeing may and Apple problem or it may be an Adobe problem dealing in failing to deal with new functionality with OS X 10.11. I think we are going to need to wait until the dust settles with Apple and Adobe before there is a correct/complete solution.

I have found that turning off the New OS X feature labeled "Automatically hide and show the menubar" seems to have helped eliminate the crash on start up AND more importantly the inability to Exit LR properly. Until there are updates from Apple AND Adobe that address these specific flaws, I recommend that everyone on 10.11 turn off the OS X feature labeled "Automatically hide and show the menubar". Doing this one thing seems to have resolved my LR problems at each end.

 

[I Simonius]

I'm on 10.11 and LR6.2.1

I find al sorts of odd things happening, including those you have mentioned, (hang on exit etc)

trying without the Auto show enabled

thanks for the suggestion

Like a fool I believed someone who said the patch had solved all the problems (actually it seems it only solved crashing)

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I could only quit Lightroom 2015.2.1 today by force quitting. I do not use "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" in El Capitan, so that cannot be the reason. I downgraded Lightroom to 2015.1.1 and can only advise anyone to do the same.

 

[I Simonius]

I tried going back but something seems to have screwed with my previous version now so I banked on the update fixing things - as it is, it is slow, and behaves oddly.

I hope they get to the bottom of this soon

 

[Victoria Bampton]

There have been a lot of issues with this release, and there are still some mystery issues with a few crashes being reported, and this force quit issue, which are still being investigated. On the other hand, these leftover issues are being seen by a relatively small percentage of the user base.

It's certainly true to say "Version 2015.2.1 has the potential t corrupt the LR catalog" but the same is true of putting the catalog on an external drive, or the power cutting out, or lightning striking the house, or....

On the other hand, we don't want to start scaremongering. A 'this catalog has been left in an inconsistent state' error message is scary if you haven't seen it before and good backups are always essential, especially when one chooses to be on the cutting edge of OS and software updates, but THERE HAVE BEEN NO REPORTS OF CATALOG CORRUPTION CAUSED BY THIS RELEASE.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

While that may be true, I don't think that anyone who has to force quit Lightroom from time to time will feel comfortable about their catalog integrity right now. Catalog corruption is lurking around the corner after each force quit, so maybe we've just been lucky so far.

I got the impression that the force quit issue is related to what you've done before quitting Lightroom. If you just open a catalog, look around a bit and perhaps export something, you can quit Lightroom without any problems. The problem seems to manifest itself especially after you added (and also possibly also if you removed) images. That too may be just a coincidence, though.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yes, I recommended to Cletus on his bug report that he roll back to 6.1.1 if he's having to force quit regularly, just to be on the safe side.

 

[clee01l]

While that may be true, I don't think that anyone who has to force quit Lightroom from time to time will feel comfortable about their catalog integrity right now. Catalog corruption is lurking around the corner after each force quit, so maybe we've just been lucky so far.

This is the point that I am making here.

Adobe used to release public betas that PROHIBITED the conversion of the production catalog during the beta. They came with warnings NOT to use the betas for mission critical work. If new versions were safe, why were the public betas release with that provision. Was there a version update of LR that did corrupt data? I don't think Victoria can say with
certainty that that has never happened.

The release of public betas changed changed with the introduction of LRCC/6 And both LR 6.0 and now LR6.2 have been major screw ups on the part of Adobe with nought a whisper about trusting your production catalog to the new untested version. Which BTW has been publicly admitted to have had known unresolved bugs when released to the user community. This occurred in Both the 6.2 and 6.2.1 releases.

There were no warnings or cautions that you get with a public beta and there are lots of people that still in spite of what is preached, do not do regular backups These people are very vulnerable and Adobe has not so much as made a statement of warning to these inexperienced users. Regularly on this forum we deal with people that have managed to corrupt their ONLY catalog copy and come here hoping that some one might fix it because they were naive enough to trust that Adobe would have them covered.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Was there a version update of LR that did corrupt data? I don't think Victoria can say with certainty that that has never happened.

No one can make any guarantee, however, there's no evidence to suggest that there's a greater risk of corruption than any other version to date. I've been tracking the issues 18 hours a day for the last week and I haven't seen a single hint of a report.

There is, however, plenty of evidence to suggest that keeping a catalog on an external drive can corrupt catalogs. But I don't hear you declaring from the rooftops that you shouldn't keep your catalog on an external drive.

The warning to make backups is universal and well deserved, but scaremongering with no evidence is not benefiting anyone.

 

[I Simonius]

One of the little things I used to love about Adobe was the pretty insignificant little giveaway they used to give when you bought a program (and registered) I used to opt for the Font. It's nothing really, but it was a font that was a well thought out present and one I wouldn't ever have thought of getting and no neither did I need it , but you know what - little things like that do endear you to the company. Silly and trivial perhaps but I missed it when the stopped doing it (for perpetual licence holders).

I wonder whether they might just redeem themselves a tiny bit if , when they have finally fixed this update boo-boo, they will offer a similar wee gift? Wouldn't that be a nice gesture?

(though I suspect perpetual licence holders are probably permanently in the Adobe dog house)

 

[clee01l]

No one can make any guarantee, however, there's no evidence to suggest that there's a greater risk of corruption than any other version to date. I've been tracking the issues 18 hours a day for the last week and I haven't seen a single hint of a report.

Victoria, you are telling this to the man that has to recreate 121 Publish Service Collections that are going to want to be republished before LR and the destination are in Sync. Unless you are in the pay of Adobe now, no one is forcing you to spend 18 hours a day tracking issues.

The warning to make backups is universal and well deserved, but scaremongering with no evidence is not benefiting anyone.

If Adobe had been forthright with their user base when CC/6.2 was released and stated up front, "This release has some serious bugs and we have not fully tested it with the OS X El Capitan release, so caution should be observed when using this update with production data." I think the user experience and expectations would be very different. When I did software development and if I released a product that was this flawed knowing that there were serious flaws uncorrected, I would have been fired and rightfully so.

You and Jim and me are recommending that users revert to 6.1.1 now. Why did you not make that statement on day one? This release should have come with a warning. Where was it? You had advanced knowledge of this fiasco. When this version was released why did you not say something then?

I don't think this thread is scaremongering and if only one person was scared by this thread into making a backup before they plunged in to 6.2.x, backed off on an Adobe recommended update (as you are now promoting) then it was justified.

 

[hassiman]

I personally find the action of Adobe in releasing ( Maybe "escaped" might be a better description. ) This Lightroom version reckless in the extreme if only because a critical module had been so heavily redesigned and was released for download sans notice to LR's users. To release the software knowing that there was a serious bug is beyond the pale. Totally irresponsible and speaks volumns about the reguard Or lack thereof Adobe has for its customer base. This can happen when a company holds itself in such high reguard... Its customers... Not so much.
Here is the latest statement from on high:

Adobe has issued an apology over the 'significant crashing bug' introduced in Lightroom 6.2. The latest version of the software was released last Monday, and brought with it a redesigned import experience. That new experience, unfortunately, also introduced instability into Lightroom and removed some import functions; users reported issues with the software crashing and running poorly.
Adobe's Tom Hogarty issued the apology on Friday, revealing that Adobe was aware of the issues but due to 'the scope of the bug' being unclear, the company decided to ship the software regardless while continuing to 'search for a reproducible case.' Adobe issued a new update on Friday, version 6.2.1, that corrects the problem.
Hogarty also commented on the import changes, saying:
'We made decisions on sensible defaults and placed many of the controls behind a settings panel. At the same time we removed some of our very low usage features to further reduce complexity and improve quality. These changes were not communicated properly or openly before launch. Lightroom was created in 2006 via a 14 month public beta in a dialog with the photography community. In making these changes without a broader dialog I’ve failed the original core values of the product and the team.'
He promised that Adobe will 'work hard to earn your trust back' with future releases.

 

[Hoggy]

... As far as worrying about corruption, and since the catalog is so vital, I've long ago installed that "LR Relaunch" script and have set LR to backup on every exit. I use it after every single 'how much I wouldn't want to lose' amount of work. For me, that could even be after a single image. (And consequently, why I take strong issue with LR's new automatic forced zipping and the "TPG LR Backup" plugin not being very functional anymore due to that.)
The backup directory also syncs with a cloud backup service.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

This release should have come with a warning. Where was it? You had advanced knowledge of this fiasco. When this version was released why did you not say something then?

I did. My blog post was released at exactly the same time as 6.2, with the specific warning not to upgrade. What’s new in Lightroom CC 2015.2 and Lightroom 6.2? While the bugs were known, the scope was not. No one with any business sense would have knowingly released a version that would get them that much bad PR.

As you're concerned about your catalog integrity, I did some additional research last night, bouncing out emails to the Digital Imaging Customer Support Manager and the database engineers. The Customer Support Manager confirmed that there have been no reported cases of catalog corruption, and considering the outcry over the last week or so, it would have been all over the web by now. The database engineers confirmed that the database is built in such a way that there's an extremely low risk of catalog corruption, even if you have to force quit repeatedly. It's no higher than any other release to date.

I'm not recommending people roll back to 6.1.1 because of any concerns over catalog corruption. I'm recommending rolling back for people who are having stability issues, such as those affecting you, because it makes it really difficult to work and that's easily fixed by rolling back.

 

[clee01l]

I did. My blog post was released at exactly the same time as 6.2, with the specific warning not to upgrade. What’s new in Lightroom CC 2015.2 and Lightroom 6.2? While the bugs were known, the scope was not. No one with any business sense would have knowingly released a version that would get them that much bad PR....

Well I guess that I should read your blog more often ;-). If you had posted a note here, I would not be in my current predicament wrt having to having to rebuild over 100 Publish Service Collections. It would have been better if that warning had come from Adobe and not you.

I still have no good feeling about my original Master that produced the warning message. My choices to recover from 2015.2.1. are
1) Use the new exported master and rebuild my Publish Services.
2) Fall back to the Sept 27th backup catalog and import all of October and re do all of my October work effort or
3) Use the master of October 6th that includes all of my work to date but was affected by the 2015.2.1 crashes to the point of generating the warning about stability.

If I could trust that the master of October 6th was not in some way corrupt, it would be my best route forward with the least effort. Who do you think would give me that assurance? Do you think your Database Engineer friends could look at my catalog file and make that pronouncement?