P: Message: "The catalog could not be opened due to an unexpected error."

I upgraded to Lightroom 10.2 earlier, and upon recently launching it encountered this error. I had to revert to the previous version *and* restart before I could open my catalog again. It seems this has gone on for a month, and there isn't useful, new information available here? No fix or suspected cause? Is this issue specific to operating Lightroom under Catalina?

As an aside, in my opinion Adobe needs to put a lot more work into stability. Constant Cloud Sync issues and anything that threatens a Lightroom library like this is remarkably bad for a program we are to rely on for professional application. It seems like I am spending as much time troubleshooting problems with Lightroom as I am actually making productive use of the program.

Hi @8510810

Surprisingly, my catalog opens just fine this morning (April 12). I have not made any changes to LrC or to my Mac so I can't understand this intermittent behavior.

Anyway, thanks for checking. I will conduct the test you suggest the next time catalog opening fails.

-JPEG

I am curious JPEG - if you simply rename the catalog (and corresponding preview folders) to a different name does the issue persist?

Still failing, same error. April 10.

and now it's back 😞  Restarting still solves it but darn.

My catalog again failed to open today (April 7).

I have not be using LrC (10.2) recently outside of daily testing to see if my catalog still opens.

Screenshot of error dialog below.

After 7 days (now March 30) my LrC catalog still opens fine.

I have not been using LrC for anything but testing over the last 7 days.

I started using Lr at v2. Today I started looking for alternatives. 

When I upgraded from LrC 9 to 10, I started having catalog problems. After the catalog was upgraded, the LrC would launch once, then not launch again without testing catalog integrity upon startup. I tried backing up, restoring backups, creating a new catalog and importing the old one -- all the same result. Now after updating to 10.2, it's worse. LrC won't even give me the option to select a catalog and test integrity - it just closes. I uninstalled, wiped prefs and re-installed, then tried again with a new catalog. The same outcome -- crashing immediately after launch. So LrC is unusable, and I can't roll back the catalog to v9 to use older software. 

What is going on here?

I've had a run of a few days of LrC 10.2 opening normally.