Saturday, May 7, 2011

Fixing double letter issues when naming people in photos in iPhoto

Problem:
When in iPhoto and naming/identifying people using "Faces" when you type in the text field all characters typed are doubled (see below)

Cause:
An address book corruption... yeah annoying hu?

Detection:
in /var/log/system.log look for lines similar to the following:
12/2/10 12:45:00 PM AddressBookSync1871 Critical error fetching ABCDContact in context <ABManagedObjectContext: 0x10012b670>: Fatal error. The database at /Users/kurtpedrosa/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb is corrupted. SQLite error code:11, 'database disk image is malformed'
The data that's important here is:
database at Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb is corrupted

Solution:
Rebuild you address book database.
I'm partially referencing the instructions from this site:
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applications/431074/corrupt-address-book-how-can-i/
1) Exit iPhoto & other apps that may use the address book.
2) Backup your address book.
  • Open Address book.
  • Click on "All Contacts" and drag that into a folder of your choosing. (that was easy)
  • Make another type of backup, from address book click on the "File" menu->"Export..."->"Address Book Archive..." and save that file somewhere safe too.
  • Quit Address Book
3) Fix the address book database.
Run the following code logged in as your user from the terminal:
echo '.dump' | sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb | sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.new; mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.bak; mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.new ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Here is the code broken into three separate commands:
echo '.dump' | sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb | sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.new
mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.bak
mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.new ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Start Address Book & iPhoto, enjoy tagging faces again.

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