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gsyoungblood
gsyoungblood
Participating Frequently
November 11, 2020
Answered

How embarrassing - almost 2021 and Adobe still can't deal with case sensitive file systems

  • November 11, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 1036 views

How is it almost 2021 and Adobe Creative Cloud still can not deal with case-sensitive file systems? Worse, they aren't even consistent about it.

 

If someone has a suggestion that is actually helpful, and does not include "reformat your root filesystem to be case-insensitive" please let me know.

 

A little background. I am a software/systems engineer. I work on a variety of systems, primarily Linux, and have to have case-sensitive file system in order to coexist everywhere across the various Linux, BSD, and other systems I work with. 

 

My current system is a Mac mini with the root file system formatted APFS with a case-senstiive filesystem. I also have an Adobe volume which is case-insensitive. Somewhere back in February I installed all of this, and managed to get eveyrthing working. Sadly I lost my notes and don't recall how I did this. I haven't tried to reconstruct them, though it wasn't that hard. I remember it being really easy.

 

Fast forward thru 2020 and the apps update at variuos times. Then Creative Cloud tries to update itself, and the dreaded error 22. 

 

All the apps that have been installed and/or updated since install are working, except for Creative Cloud. It wants to update, but it can't. And I'd like to update the installed versions, but they are now stuck too.

 

The frustration levels are really high, especially after an extremely long wait to get help from their support and then the support person not reading what I wrote and asking questions I had already provided the answers to when I explained my problem after he or she signed in to my chat session. 

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Nancy OShea

    A two computer setup is not practical. Nor is a VM based solution. I've tried both, and returned to a single machine, multi-monitor set-up each time.

     

    The bigger issue is why they changed things, breaking what used to work.

     

    My setup:

    / - case insensitive

    /Users/{home} - case sensitive

    /Users/{home}/Library/Application Support/Adobe - {case insensitive}

     

    Note that the only case-sensitive part of my system is my home directory. Everything else is case-insensitive just for Adobe. However, for my work I require case sensitive file system. Thanks to APFS and relatively low overhead filesystems (flashback to ZFS), I created a place for Adobe that was case-insensitive.

     

    With this approach I was able to install and run all the apps without any issue. Updates also worked. That is until a few months (3?) ago when I first noticed CC wouldn't update. The apps continued to work, so I didn't really care at the time

     

    Today I was wanting to update and so I started digging.

     

    The Creative Cloud app is doing something new. It is no longer looking solely at the Adobe folder. It is looking somewhere in my home folder outside of where it should be. I don't know where yet. If it were properly looking in the Adobe directory, it would be case-insensitive and there wouldn't be an issue.

     

    I suspect the app is testing the home directory itself, even though the place where case-sensitivity matters is in the Adobe directory.

     

    Poor coding in my opinion. Check where the files matter (Adobe), not outside of that area.

     

    This almost seems deliberate, meant to break things for people that figured out how to make things work despite Adobe, however taking Hanlon's razor into account it's most likely stupidity, not deliberate.

     

     


    Adobe works closely with Apple & MS to develop apps that are compatible with the latest OSs.  But Adobe's product developers don't lurk in these user-to-user forums.  Feel free to submit your feature requests below where the engineers will see them. 

    https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

     

    1 reply

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    November 11, 2020

    You already know the only solution, but want us to tell you that. Adobe follow the big numbers, not the speciality setups. They drop whole OSs which have thousands of times more current users than this feature. Maybe dual boot is your solution. I can't recommend VMs because of the lack of virtualized GPU support. 

    gsyoungblood
    gsyoungbloodAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    November 11, 2020

    Sad, but true. 

     

    I used to use a VM macOS so I could have adobe on the primary and the rest of my work on the VM on the same machine, but that grew tiresome after a while because it made everything more cumbersome. This worked for a while, and the apps themselves still work, only the updates don't work so I'm stuck with what was installed back then before the update that broke things came along.

     

    Even though I had done my own research and googling, I hoped I had overlooked something, so I posted. Never know if you don't ask.

     

    Hopefully someone has something to offer.

     

    I did find something interesting, and I'm working on it to make sure I've exhausted all possibilities. The Adobe volume I have (case insensitive) was supposed to be mounted to ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe but it seems that cross mount didn't survive an os update and so I'm fixing that and hoping that will make the difference. 

     

     

    Nancy OShea
    Community Expert
    Nancy OSheaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 11, 2020

    Maybe a 2 computer set-up would be a better fit for what you're doing.

     

    Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
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