I recently made a few changes on my home computer (bought a new machine to replce an aging iMac, migrated files to the new computer, and changed my username / home directory). I'm running Mac OS Ventura on an Mac Studio M1 Ultra. When I recently tried to open BikeCAD 19.0, I received an error message: "Can't extract configuration files". Is there an easy fix for this?
Sat, Jan 21, 2023
#1
BikeCAD 19.0 won't open | "Can't extract configuration files"
I can't be sure exactly what's going on there. When you speak of migrating files over, I trust you are just talking about moving over your BCAD files which would be the files containing your various BikeCAD designs. That's a straight forward operation and something I definitely recommend. However, sometimes people try to copy the program itself over to a new computer. I don't recommend this. All BikeCAD Pro owners can download the latest version of the program from their account on BikeCAD.ca whenever needed. It is much more straight forward when setting up BikeCAD on a new computer just to start from the installation files available on BikeCAD.ca.
If you've done this and you are still getting the "Can't extract configuration files" error, I would first see if you have a folder called BikeCAD_19.0_configuration anywhere on your computer. You can use the Mac Finder to search for this directory. If you do have such a directory, that would suggest that the configuration files were partially extracted. You could try deleting this directory and launching BikeCAD Pro again. If BikeCAD ever can't find the configuration directory, it will attempt to extract a new one. Hopefully, on your second attempt the full directory will get properly extracted.
If this doesn't work, or if no part of any configuration directory can be extracted, let me know and I could send you the required configuration directory and you could just manually copy it into place.
Thanks Brent. The version of BikeCAD I tried was indeed a fresh install. I also tried searching for the BikeCAD_19.0_configuration folder, but no such folder exists on my machine. Perhaps you can try senidng me the configuration directory as you suggested?
Thanks!
You can download the folder called BikeCAD_19.0_configuration from here. You'll have to extract the contents of the downloaded file to obtain this folder. The folder should be placed in your Home directory which would be at Users/Your username/. Let me know how you get along.
Hi Brent, I just tried this and wasn't successful. When I launch the app, I see that a file called temp.jar is created in my home folder while the app is trying to launch, and then the file is deleted after the launch script is aborted. Not sure if this helps the troubleshooting process or not, but thought I would flag in any event.
Did you manage to extract the contents of the zip file you downloaded from here? If you place that folder BikeCAD_19.0_configuration in your home directory, BikeCAD should not be making any attempts to extract the contents of temp.jar. When you launch BikeCAD, the program will always look for the presence of a folder called BikeCAD_19.0_configuration in your home directory. It should only attempt to extract new configuration files if it can't find that folder.
Hi Brent,
Yes, I was able to extract the contents of the zip file. I put the BikeCAD_19.0_configuration folder in my home directory and tried to open the app -- same error message ("Can't extract configuration files"). I tried deleting and re-downloading the app with no success. The only other thing I should mention is since I got my new computer, I did change my username, so my home directory would be a different directory than the last time I successfully opened BikeCAD (on my old machine). I suspect this shouldn't matter, but did want to flag it for completeness.
Any other suggestions?
I'm confused about how you claim to have changed your username. If it is a new computer, one of the things you have to do to setup the new computer is assign a username. Is that all you did? Was it just a matter of assigning a different username this time around? Or did you set it up once with one username but then go back and change that username after the fact? In theory, I wouldn't think it would matter but I suppose this does present a possible source of confusion when we try to determine exactly what is your home directory. If you saw the file temp.jar getting created and then deleted, wherever that was going on should be what BikeCAD considers your home directory. However, again, if it finds the folder BikeCAD_19.0_configuration in that same spot and that folder contains all the configuration files including one called properties.xml, then it shouldn't be trying to extract configuration files there anyway. It should just be reading the configuration files that are already there, not trying to extract new ones.
This may not help, but another thing to be aware of is you do have the ability to change the place where BikeCAD looks for the configuration files. This is explained at: bikecad.ca/changing_configuration_file_location. The unfortunate thing about this is although this gives you the ability to change where BikeCAD looks for configuration files, you have to be able to launch BikeCAD to be able to change this setting. There's a workaround though. All that BikeCAD does here is create a file called .bikecad_config. Note the first character is a dot. This makes it a hidden file. If you can't see hidden files, you can go to your Mac finder and hit Command + Shift + . (period) to make these files visible. You could create the file .bikecad_config in a text editor. If this file contained the line /Users/Your username/Desktop/ this would make your desktop the new location for BikeCAD configuration files. The file .bikecad_config must be located in your actual home directory.
The more I think about this, the more I think it likely comes down to ensuring that BikeCAD is granted permission to access the files it needs. For more on that, see: support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchld5a35146/mac.
Got it! The .bikecad_config file already existed in my home directory (would have been copied over from the migration), and was pointing to /Users/legacyusername/Documents. I updated it to /Users/newusername/Documents, and the application loaded without issue.
To clarify what created this situation, my prior iMac crashed about 6 weeks ago -- catastrophic failure of the hard drive. I got a new Mac Studio, and was able to migrate my files over from a backup drive I had via Time Machine. After the migration, I decided to change my username (plan was to create similar usernames for all users in the family going forward). Discovered the configuration issue the first time I tried to open BikeCAD after changing my username. But the issue has been resolved now -- thanks for your help, Brent!
Glad to hear you figured that out. Thanks for the explanation.