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

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

Post by mikehalloran »

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
All you have to do is boot from a TRIM enabled SSD running OS 10.10.4. Otherwise, you are correct on running Repair Disk—and you must in 10.10.3 and earlier. This is backwards compatible to 10.6.8. In El Cap, the reports aren't very good.
Mike - Do you own any SM951s?
This is the same family that Apple is using in newer Mac Books so yes, I bought a couple for my wife and daughter and service a few more. I don't know why you think this should matter.

Apple disabled write to zeros in 10.11.x for SSDs and crippled it for HHDs. I'm with Apple on solid state and disagree re HHDs. I know what test to run to see if I understand why on HHDs—if I am curious enough and make the time.

As of June, Apple no longer offers a MacBook with an HHD unless you find any in the Refurb Store (none today). It's no secret that the Minis and iMacs will follow suit as solid state drives come down in price.
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HCMarkus
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by HCMarkus »

mikehalloran wrote:
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
All you have to do is boot from a TRIM enabled SSD...
Boot drive does not have to be an SSD, but Trim must be enabled.
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Steve Steele
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by Steve Steele »

bayswater wrote:
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?
Sort of. Manual TRIM. Here's what people don't seem to know. i'll quote from the SoftRAID website.

"Apple stopped actively developing AppleRAID in 2009 and removed full support for it in El Capitan (Mac OS X 10.11). If you ever have a problem with your AppleRAID volumes, you'll be stuck.

"As of July 1, 2015, the Mac OS 10.10.4 update officially allows users to enable TRIM for third party SSD devices using the command line. However, the built-in software RAID in OS X still does not support TRIM, so the SoftRAID application is necessary for TRIM in this configuration."

"Apple's RAID driver is single threaded and does not support TRIM at all. the driver is single threaded as probably the original author of Apple's RAID did not have the expertise to use asynchronous multi-threading. So the RAID driver was written with single threading."


Manually TRIM an SSD instead of writing zeros.

Manual Trim works by zeroing out all the available blocks on your SSD. If Automatic Trim is enabled while doing this, it will effectively Trim all the available blocks. If Automatic Trim is not enabled, you can still run Manual Trim. This will then instead trigger Garbage Collection routines over the blocks, which will recondition your drive.

For maximum benefit, you can enable Automatic Trim, reboot, run Manual Trim and then disable Automatic Trim again, if you wish.

The process can take between 10-40 minutes depending on the available space on your drive. None of your data is deleted during the process.

Whenever a delete command is issued by the operating system or the user, the SSD automatically sends a TRIM command to immediately wipe the area of storage that holds the now-deleted data. This means that, the next time the operating system tries to write new data in that area, it won't have to waste time deleting it; it will already be empty.

Most benchmark applications write blocks of zeros when testing the write speed of a disk.

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

Post by csavetman »

labman wrote: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.
I can verify that clippings was the culprit for -109 error message over here. Had a recently created project open along with an existing documents clipping folder. (Probably from DP8 I would imagine.) Dragged a bunch of new docs and a zip file to it, and then, BAM! "Master Pointer was nil" message pops up.
Running disk utility came up with nothing. Then searched this thread.
I took the clippings folder in question out of the prefs folder and to the trash. DP opened just fine.

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

Post by labman »

csavetman wrote: Running disk utility came up with nothing. Then searched this thread.
I took the clippings folder in question out of the prefs folder and to the trash. DP opened just fine.

Carlos
Thank you for posting this Carlos. You mean, they didn't fix this long standing thing in 9.12. I hadn't even thought to check it. (not that I wanna see that error ever again. :brucelee: )
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by dix »

If you have a Time Machine backup of that drive, replace it and restore from Time Machine or other backup
I'm having this exact issue (Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)") as the OP. Sorry for the braindead, rookie question, but how do I restore from TM? The internet says to start by booting while holding Cmnd-R. That does nothing for me. Thx.
Last edited by dix on Thu Feb 02, 2017 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by dix »

...in my haste, thinking my drive was on the way out, I SuperDuped my boot drive to a spinner. That drive too reports "'...(-109)" when I try to launch DP. Apparently I duped the the problem.

Next I created a new account on my main, original, SSD Boot drive. It does run DP, which makes me think it's not a bad drive, but a bad pref or something. Is that possible?

[UPDATE] After several hours of re-installing effing everything onto the new account - the acct that will let me launch DP - things seem to be working. Feels like a big kludge, but I think I may be able to make my deadline. ...Damn, what a sht-show today was. I'll call MOTU in the AM, but any insights'd be appreciated. Thx
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labman
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by labman »

Every time that happened here, it was NOT the drive. It is a MOTU bug with older DP clippings. And we have discussed this with MOTU. Still has not been addressed. Were you using clippings or altering clippings folders? If so, just bring in the pre-mangled ones from backup set, and DP will be good as new.
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 dix »

Thanks. I was not doing anything with Clippings at the time, but I tried restoring old ones anyway with no effect. Nor did removing all the Clippings entirely. Any other possible culprits I should try?
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by labman »

Unfortunately that is the only thing I know. :(
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by dix »

Thanks. The consensus at the moment is that it's an OS issue and that need to reinstall it. More details here if you're interested viewtopic.php?f=1&t=63001
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by FMiguelez »

Steve Steele wrote: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.
Whoever you are, wherever you are I SALUTE YOU!!

Because of your post, I still have a few hairs left, and I didn't waste the rest of the day trobule-shooting.

Wow!
I was sorting out and ordering my "composition ideas" clippings. Then I opened an old project, and I started getting the stupid "Nil (-109)" message crap.
I thought it was just this project, but then I couldn't even open the DP app anymore! It would crash before even reading a project.

Console told me DP could not load something related to Automap, so I uninstalled that app to no avail. I reinstalled DP like 4 times. I created a new account, and DP worked there. That gave me clues, but I would NEVER have suspected the Clippings to cause this.

Man, I was debating whether I should migrate my current Documents folder to the new account, or if I should try first doing a CLEAN DP uninstall.

Then I googled the error, and I found this post... Sure enough! It HAD to be MOTUNation where I found my answer.

So, thank you so much, Steve.

Oh, BTW, do you know which clipping it was???? It was a global one where, ALL I did, was add a few Alias shortcuts. I did that from the Finder, but I can't believe DP can't handle that...
Judging by the thread, MOTU hasn't fixed it this for a while...

Pheeeew.... Freaking CLIPPINGS!!!! Who would've thought? :smash: :smash:

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

Post by mikehalloran »

FMiguelez wrote:
Steve Steele wrote: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.
Whoever you are, wherever you are I SALUTE YOU!!
...
Mr. Steele is an experienced Apple Tech (or engineer?). We don't see him around too much which is too bad.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by JZilla »

Hey folks, I've had the same problem show up again with a different computer, and it appears that it was my projects drive beginning to fail. I've replaced that drive, and all seems to be well.
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Re: Error message "Master Pointer was nil (-109)"

Post by fypy »

Hello everybody !

Excuse my poor english, i'm french...

I had the same issue this morning, and it was because i had managed one of my clipping window directly from the finder, while DP was open, and this particular clipping window active.

I used Time Machine to fix the problem.

I think that, if you want to manipulate some items in a clipping window, you have to make it from DP, and not from the Finder. Perhaps because DP writes in an .xlm file named "PerfClippingPrefs". If the instructions in this file, and the content of the folder, are different, this may cause the "Master Pointer" error.

Hope this help !
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