Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

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Steve Steele
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by Steve Steele »

Here's the deal - Make sure that you didn't all of a sudden put too many items in your "Clippings" folders. That WILL cause this exact error message to pop up right after DP gets through scanning plugins. I'll make a video showing you this happening if it's that necessary.

It doesn't mean the drive is bad, it means DP is having trouble loading something that's either too big or contains too many files or directories.

I didn't have time to read this whole thread bit hopefully you created a new user account and launched DP with or without the Option or Alt key in Safe mode (In fact do this in your normal account too). If DP opens normally, then you know that there is something about the way you have DP configured that is keeping it from finishing all it's checks, and not the drive.

If this doesn't work it could be a User Permissions issue. Boot into Recovery Mode, open Terminal and type "resetpassword". That will open an app that lets you select the user directory you want to repair, select that, and from there at the bottom of the window you have a chance to repair user directory that the normal repair permissions doesn't touch.

Try opening DP after all this is done. It probably won't fix it but it's worth a try, because the problem is most likely isolated to your user account.

It could be a bad file or sector on a platter drive. But on the m.2 SSD that I use, this is not likely. With SSDs and "trimforce enable" on in El Cap, you could format the drive with the Terminal using the command "diskutil zeroDisk". Make sure you if you own Waves plugins that you send your license to the Waves cloud, and the same with other plugins that use any kind of disk level encryption. Plugins that use iLok, you don't have to do anything. Same with VSL. Even Waves gives you one free "oops, forgot to move my licenses" out of jail free card. Off the top of my head, maybe PSP, Plugin Alliance (but I think theirs is server based). Anyway, the point is deactivate ALL plugins that use disk activation.

Zero the SSD, restore from a Time Machine backup, BUT remove all of the preferences for your user folder that relate to DP and open DP in safe mode. As things start to work, tell DP which plugin format you want to use, let it scan all of your plugins, and hopefully when it's done DP will open.

Be careful what you put back into your prefs. In fact, I'd put nothing back. If you have a lot of Clippings try putting back the smaller ones first.

I've seen this on someone's machine and it turned out that they put a huge folder with subfolders of Apple Loops in the Clippings folder in their User Library's Preferences. That caused the "Master Pointer was nil (-109)" error. I may be wrong but to me that says DP can't load everything you're asking it to load.

Bottom line, probably something DP can't handler opening because it's too much or something is corrupted. You could always duplicate it, which will write to another part of the drive, trash or move the old folders and see if that works.

Everything is near this area..

/user/Library/Preferences/com.motu.DigitalPerformer

/user/Library/Preferences/MOTU Clippings

Happy troubleshooting the worthless "Master Pointer was nil (-109)" error.

Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 128GBs Unified memory, 4TB SSD.
Interfaces: MOTU M2 and 8A (2.1 and 5.1 setups).
DAWs: Digital Performer 11, Logic Pro, Cubase 12 Pro, Studio One Pro.
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labman
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by labman »

You are absolutely correct about clippings causing this error Steve. We have shown MOTU that there is an issue in clippings that if you have clippings folders that is older (pre DP9) you can get this bug 100% of the time, if as you said there are a lot of clippings inside it, and you then create a new one. All is well until the next time you restart your mac and boot DP- Then bam, the master pointer was nil error. It took us forever to find what was causing it. We backtracked thru logs of changes and found we had made a new clipping in a busy folder the day before. As soon as we removed the newly created clipping all was well again.

Yes, Motu has known this for months now. I sure hope it is fixed in coming update.
AMPGUI themes - Andy rocks!, 3 macs, MacPro 768GB ram, 16core OS11.7.10, DP11.31, all Waves, all SLATE, PSP, IK multimedia & Audioease plugs, all PAlliance, Softube, tons of NI VI's all air Spitfire, all Audiobro, all Berlin, EW PLAY, LLizard, MachFive3, Kontakt5, Omnisphere, RMX, LASS, all Soundtoys, Lexicon AU's, melodyne and others I know am forgetting, cause I'm old...Also mucho outboard rigs, MTPs, DTP, antelope WC, and 4 control surfaces with Raven.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by Steve Steele »

Thanks for pointing out this is a known issue. I did see where someone had figured it out but not much else was posted about it.

I would really like to see MOTU do more with Clippings (which was, and still is a good idea). I think something like a Logic's Bin but obviously still with the flexibility that Clippings has. Also, I think Clippings should be able to dock into a Sidebar as a Cell just like Soundbites and everything else. IMO, it would really speed up the workflow.

Good to hear you guys have communicated with MOTU about this.

Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 128GBs Unified memory, 4TB SSD.
Interfaces: MOTU M2 and 8A (2.1 and 5.1 setups).
DAWs: Digital Performer 11, Logic Pro, Cubase 12 Pro, Studio One Pro.
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labman
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by labman »

Steve Steele wrote:Also, I think Clippings should be able to dock into a Sidebar as a Cell just like Soundbites and everything else.
This is brilliant Steve! Write MOTU!!!
AMPGUI themes - Andy rocks!, 3 macs, MacPro 768GB ram, 16core OS11.7.10, DP11.31, all Waves, all SLATE, PSP, IK multimedia & Audioease plugs, all PAlliance, Softube, tons of NI VI's all air Spitfire, all Audiobro, all Berlin, EW PLAY, LLizard, MachFive3, Kontakt5, Omnisphere, RMX, LASS, all Soundtoys, Lexicon AU's, melodyne and others I know am forgetting, cause I'm old...Also mucho outboard rigs, MTPs, DTP, antelope WC, and 4 control surfaces with Raven.
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bayswater
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by bayswater »

Good post, Mr Steele. I agree, some work from MOTU on clippings would be a good thing for DP.

One question: you mention zeroing an SSD. Various things I read say not to do that, or that it's not necessary, or both. What's your take on this?
2018 Mini i7 32G 10.14.6, DP 11.3, Mixbus 9, Logic 10.5, Scarlett 18i8
labman
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by labman »

We were taught by OWC to NOT zero any SSDs.
AMPGUI themes - Andy rocks!, 3 macs, MacPro 768GB ram, 16core OS11.7.10, DP11.31, all Waves, all SLATE, PSP, IK multimedia & Audioease plugs, all PAlliance, Softube, tons of NI VI's all air Spitfire, all Audiobro, all Berlin, EW PLAY, LLizard, MachFive3, Kontakt5, Omnisphere, RMX, LASS, all Soundtoys, Lexicon AU's, melodyne and others I know am forgetting, cause I'm old...Also mucho outboard rigs, MTPs, DTP, antelope WC, and 4 control surfaces with Raven.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by mikehalloran »

labman wrote:We were taught by OWC to NOT zero any SSDs.
Never, ever, EVER write to zeros on an SSD.

Many of Steve's repair recommendations are ill advised while others no longer work in OS 10.11. Here are some articles on the subject. If you are going to boot up into reset password mode, it's a good idea to know what you are doing—you can really screw up your system if you just try anything it lets you do although just resetting the password is harmless.
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/02/26 ... very-mode/
https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/re ... d-mac-osx/

To boot into Safe Mode, hold the Shift key, not Option or Alt.

-109 is an OS error telling you that you cannot write to a directory. That's what it means. It does not always mean a corrupt drive—not having privileges or permissions, a locked directory or many other factors can trigger this.

If Clippings can trigger this, it is curious indeed. It will be interesting to see what MOTU will do about this if anything.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by Steve Steele »

Never, ever, EVER write to zeros on an SSD.
Let's be real. The lifespan of a SSD is greater then the time you'll probably own it. There are times when zeroing a m.2 SSD is the only current way to solve a specific issue with write times slowing down dramatically. The life span of an m.2 drive is maybe 5 years or so. And they're not that expensive. Admittedly I don't use SATA SSDs anymore, only ACHI m.2 SSDs on the PCIe bus, so I can only speak to those for the last year or so.

If you were to write zeros to m.2 SSDs once a week or even once a month, yeah bad idea. Zeroing a SSD will lower the lifespan of the drive but mine are drives that are used as read drives almost exclusively. I've had these drives for a year, I've had to zero a couple of drives once, one of them twice. The drives are performing great. I use five of them in each MacPro and accept for this one issue which seems to have improved with OS X upgrades, they are solid. Zeroing them if needed doesn't worry me.

I'm well aware of the, "never zero a SSD" warnings. I've read many of the articles about the issue. I'll do it anyway if I have to and I've have had no problems because of it. The SM951 is a well built drive.
Many of Steve's repair recommendations are ill advised while others no longer work in OS 10.11. Here are some articles on the subject. If you are going to boot up into reset password mode, it's a good idea to know what you are doing—you can really screw up your system if you just try anything it lets you do although just resetting the password is harmless.
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/02/26 ... very-mode/
https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/re ... d-mac-osx/
uh..
you can really screw up your system if you just try anything...although just resetting the password is harmless.
What is so hard about repairing user permissions? That's not just trying anything. It's easy. Besides, it was MOTU's idea to try and repair user permissions on a 10.11.x system I was working on. So no big deal.

I'm not a big fan of repairing permissions. It's too wide reaching and I'm glad Apple is getting away from it. But permissions are a big part of a multi-user OS. I've always been fairly aggressive about creating minor but custom permissions under certain circumstances. This isn't for everybody. But I run constant backups in case something goes wrong and I need to restore, so I don't worry.

In all this time I've been using OS X I've never hosed a system, and I run fairly cutting edge systems. Despite SIP there are reasons one might need to repair permissions. Sometimes it's a users actions that gets them into that situation. I always do clean installs. I did a clean install when I upgraded to El Cap. However, one app would crash as it tried scanning VSTs. It was obvious why. There was only one reasonable solution.

I like what Apple is doing with SIP, I just hope they keep developers informed and make the transition as smooth as possible.

I wasn't aware that MOTU knew about the Clippings issue but it seemed obvious to me that that's what was causing the -109 error. Although that's not the only thing that can cause the (-109) error.
To boot into Safe Mode, hold the Shift key, not Option or Alt.
I was referring to DP Safe Mode not OS X Safe Mode.
-109 is an OS error telling you that you cannot write to a directory. That's what it means. It does not always mean a corrupt drive—not having privileges or permissions, a locked directory or many other factors can trigger this.
Correct. And maybe more.
If Clippings can trigger this, it is curious indeed. It will be interesting to see what MOTU will do about this if anything.
Although I've always loved the Finder friendly drag and drop nature of DP, and Clippings have always been a really cool feature, but I think now Clippings should be more than just a collection of directories referencing files. MOTU could do a lot of cool things with Clippings.

Maybe my advice isn't for everybody, I'm a bit aggressive when it comes to troubleshooting, but it's served me well. That's all I can say.

Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 128GBs Unified memory, 4TB SSD.
Interfaces: MOTU M2 and 8A (2.1 and 5.1 setups).
DAWs: Digital Performer 11, Logic Pro, Cubase 12 Pro, Studio One Pro.
Sample Libraries: Primary - VSL (all), Spitfire, (mostly all), and many others.
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bayswater
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by bayswater »

Steve Steele wrote:
Let's be real. The lifespan of a SSD is greater then the time you'll probably own it.
I get that. But is there any point in zeroing a SSD? Isn't there a key that gets erased on a basic format operation, preventing anything previously written from being read?
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by mikehalloran »

TRIM scrambles deleted files and allocates data evenly across an SSD if allowed to do so. Try recovering a deleted file after a couple of minutes if TRIM is enabled and see how successful you are.

Writing to zeros, like so called 'disk optimization', interferes with TRIM and garbage collection. I don't expect everyone to know nor understand how SSDs work. That's ok—the info is out there. There are other threads with links to well written articles on this. It's easily looked up and I see no reason to rewrite it all again. Google is very good, too.

It is no longer possible to write zeros to an entire drive in OS 10.11. Apple has disabled that function in Disk Utility. You can do this on partitions only now and I don't know if it's possible to do even that on as SSD. If I get on my iMac later today, very easy to test. I'll create a tiny partition, copy some data and see if write to zeros is an option. When I delete the partition, TRIM will take care of it.

As was about to post this, a line transformer blew up in our neighborhood. So I may not get to my Mac today.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by mikehalloran »

Is this issue affecting anyone on Yosemite or El Capitán?
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by labman »

mikehalloran wrote:Is this issue affecting anyone on Yosemite or El Capitán?
Which issue Mike???

If you mean clippings, yes, Yosemite, DP9.x and clippings create the dreaded error.
AMPGUI themes - Andy rocks!, 3 macs, MacPro 768GB ram, 16core OS11.7.10, DP11.31, all Waves, all SLATE, PSP, IK multimedia & Audioease plugs, all PAlliance, Softube, tons of NI VI's all air Spitfire, all Audiobro, all Berlin, EW PLAY, LLizard, MachFive3, Kontakt5, Omnisphere, RMX, LASS, all Soundtoys, Lexicon AU's, melodyne and others I know am forgetting, cause I'm old...Also mucho outboard rigs, MTPs, DTP, antelope WC, and 4 control surfaces with Raven.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by mikehalloran »

It is no longer possible to write zeros to an entire drive in OS 10.11. Apple has disabled that function in Disk Utility. You can do this on partitions only now and I don't know if it's possible to do even that on as SSD. If I get on my iMac later today, very easy to test. I'll create a tiny partition, copy some data and see if write to zeros is an option. When I delete the partition, TRIM will take care of it.
While I certainly have my issues with Disk Utility in El Capitan, on one point, Apple got it right:

It doesn't appear to be possible to write to zeros on an SSD—even a partition— since OS 10.11. Since it serves no purpose and can cripple a solid state drive by overwriting the overprovisioning partition, score one for Apple.

Write to zeros had two purposes on an HHD:

a) It mapped bad sectors and wrote a new sector map so that those sectors could be avoided. Now that DU can only zero partitions and not the entire drive, this functionality no longer exists. OK... that works in 10.4.11—10.10.5. One of the reasons that I think DU 10.11 sucks is that, if it can tell the difference between an SSD and an HHD, why did it cripple this function? OK, I can guess that there are ways to mount an SSD so that DU can't tell the difference (USB 2?) but that test will wait for a day when I can shut down my Mac.

b) Write to zeros made it difficult to impossible to recover data from a drive on an HHD depending on the number of passes. Since TRIM and garbage collection already make it impossible to recover deleted files on an SSD, there's no need. Crime screenwriters are going to have to stop relying on recovering deleted files to close their cases (how will NCIS survive that and Michael Weatherly leaving?)—just saying...
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by Steve Steele »

Mike - Do you own any SM951s?

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Interfaces: MOTU M2 and 8A (2.1 and 5.1 setups).
DAWs: Digital Performer 11, Logic Pro, Cubase 12 Pro, Studio One Pro.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by HCMarkus »

If you want to trim your boot SSD, start up from an alternate boot drive with Trim enabled and run Repair Disk in Disk Utility. SSD will be trimmed as part of the Repair operation.

I have personally confirmed the above work under Mountain Lion, not newer OS versions.

Although I haven't done this, I imagine that, to totally clean an SSD and ready it for writing anew, you could Erase the SSD, then run Repair Disk with Trim enabled. The OS should tell the SSD all cells are available for writing and give it a clean slate.

I think SM951s respond to Trim command, but not sure. I don't have any PCIe SSDs.
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