Installation with symbolic Links not working

If yo do not have enough disk space and move “like me” some of the huge directories on a separate disk ( e.g. /Library/Audio ) by using a symbolic link be careful because, even if your Logic will work fine, you won’t be able to install any Waves plugin.
For some strange reason the installation scripts will fail and makes you crazy while trying to solve the puzzle…
Neither the online nor the offline procedure will work at all :frowning_face:
The error is
PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '/Volumes/FastCache2/Library/Audio/
It seems that the installation script is trying to change the owner of the directory and, of course fails in doing this.

Yeah you can’t “mess” with the default location of the Waves plugins, you’ll end up with all sorts of issues.

You can however nominate another drive to install any instrument samples on. Not sure about their convolution reverb samples, though. :thinking:

However I think that it’s not fair, when you installa Waves Central it will download licenses and activate on a disk regarless the installation, so, if the plugin installation fails you have only the chance to migrate to another disk licenses and this is the only “shot” you have.
Once the second installation fails, you can’t use your plugin even if you have no working installation at all.
The flow should be “fist install” -> “second activate license” and not “first activate licese” -> “the try and pray installation”.
Finally, the “symbolic link” is a standard unix ( and Mac Os ) command … so it’s not “mess” it’s just a “standard OS feature” and there is not any technical specification which states that you cannot use them ( logic uses them succesfully ). So you shuold specifiy this limit because it’s a big problem… if you do not have sufficient space you cannot use symbolic link to point to a huge storage and you cannot you what you payed for … !
I made a little debug on your script and it seems that the problem is that the installation script tries to change the owner of the “symbolic link” with the “current user” … to fix the problem should be sufficient check if the installation directory is a directory or a symbolic link … if it’s a symbolic link just skip the “chown” command because it simply will not works as in the /Library directory all the directories ( and the links ) are owner by root with group admin or wheel and not by the current user.
Simple no?
:slightly_smiling_face:

S

Hi @simonluca.scillitani

Welcome to Waves Forum, and thanks for the input.

Waves Software indeed must be installed on the system drive.
And as mentioned in the system requirements: ‘8 GB free disk space on the system drive’ is required.

*Installing all Waves plugins, will not take more than 8GB.

Regarding your licenses:
If your licenses were activated to your computer, they can be simply deactivated by the instructions in our Move Licenses article.
*There is no limit to the amount of Activation-Deactivation/Moving licenses.

In any case, I will forward your inquiry/input to the relevant personnel at Waves to consider.

Hello Urib,
This " *Installing all Waves plugins, will not take more than 8GB." is terribly wrong.
At the bottom there is this note:

  • Waves Instruments: Additional disk-space may be required for sample libraries.
    Specific information available on each instrument’s page."

Only The Inspire Virtual Instruments Collection takes 7Gb SD and 18,5Gb on HD

So all the plugins I bought required about 40Gb of additional space ( and not 8Gb )

Regarding the license migration … this is true if you do it BEFORE formatting the disk or BEFORE the disk fails … so what? If your HD fails you cannot “move” licenses at all … the same if you formatted ( as I did ) the drive as I had to install all the OS/Logic and stuff on an external HD.
Logic Pro and all other “non Waves plugins” worked perfectly with the “/Library/Audio” sym link to an external disk, the problem is only for Waves … and, again, the problem is just because your installation script tries to change the owner of the SymLink from root to the current user ( and, of course, fails ) even if you have 777 permission (owner,group,others) which states that all the world can read write and execute files and directory.

However … now all works and that’s the important thing, but in my understanding, Waves should improve both the installation and the migration process in order to accomodate customer needs.

Ps: when you open a ticket and get as answer “we’ll get in touch in next 48 hours generally” the first thing you think is “Hey I have to work right now … what should I tell to my customers? come back in 3/4 days “maybe” ??” I payed more than 700 bucks for this…"
To be honest I found disappointing this for 700 bucks so what if I’d pay the full price? ( >5000? )

Thanks

Hi @simonluca.scillitani,

I indeed excluded the Sample libraries from this ‘Installing all Waves plugins, will not take more than 8GB’ rule as those can be Installed/Moved to another drive.

SymLink is currently not supported with our software, and as mentioned I have forwarded it to the relevant personnel to consider.

Regarding the Licenses Migration inquiry:
As mentioned in our Computer appears as disconnected device article:

Waves Central recognizes computers by their Network Interface Cards (NIC) MAC address. Hardware MAC addresses are assigned by the manufacturer and cannot be changed.

Therefore, Even if the hard drive fails or formatted, as long as the Network Interface Card is the same, Waves Central will recognize it as the same computer and will rewrite the licenses to the drive

In our Reactivate & Recover Licenses on the bottom of the page, you can find instructions for how to retrieve your licenses in such cases.
.
Note that if any urgent technical assistance is needed, you are very welcome to contact our Tech Support via phone: 1-865-909-9200 ext. 1.

Tech Support hours are: Monday – Thursday: 3:00 am – Midnight (EST)

Hi,
during the installation process I didn’t see any option to install samples on another drive are you sure?
Regarding the license migration I used the same Mac for the installation ( I own just one ) with the same network card ( it’s a laptop ) and the only option I found was the “recovery” and it’s what I did … but, this means that I have not a second chance to recover for all the year and I think that’s not fair since I had no chance to use the product at all.
P.S.: from developer to developer … use the MAC address as unique identifier is an “old school” way … try “sudo ifconfig en0 ether aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff” and you will realize that it’s not so secure as you think.

Finally … thaks for 1-865-909-9200 ext. 1 . as an Italian customer I guess a call will cost me the same as the package I bought :wink: maybe Waves is only for US customers?

However, thanks for the answer I will take all this stuff into consideration for the renewal.

S

Hi @simonluca.scillitani,

First, regarding Samples locations, those can indeed be directed to any location using Waves Central > Settings > Locations.

Note that the instruments can also be installed without downloading the samples, to take the load off the installation.

Those could be downloaded manually and placed outside of the default locations, following the instructions in this link.

Lastly, note that we have costumers all around the globe and our Tech Support team will gladly assist over email using this link.

Make sure to fill in all the information, so they could assist as quickly as possible.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

I made this post while I was trying to fix a problem that your support discovered to be on my Mac account. I had to work without some of your best and useful plugins and this made me very frustrated.
I understand that it’s not an excuse, however I got a wonderful support from your technician that after hours speeded on the phone and with remote support found a problem on my account and solved it.
I apologize for the words.
Thanks again.

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