pkgf extension from Logic files on Google Drive? [SOLVED]

[ManFromNapa]

I had a bunch of logic files stored on Google Drive in a folder.  I downloaded the folder.  Google zipped it.  When I unzipped it, one of my logic files was showing as “song.logicx.pkgf”.  Logic won’t open it.  Is there anyway to restore this?  I was a dumby and deleted the folder from Google before checking the files. 

[des99]

Services like this don't run, or know about Mac filesystems generally. If you copy native Mac things, like packages (which is what projects are), they will likely get corrupted because these services don't preserve Mac filesystem meta data.

This is why you should zip up Logic projects before uploading them to these services to preserve the Mac file metadata.

It looks like Google Drive is doing something to try to handle packages (which are really folders full of files in disguise). Did you try removing the .pkgf extension, so the file extension is .logicx, and loading the project?

Right-click it and choose "Show package contents" - does it look good in there?

[ManFromNapa]

I tried changing the extension to logicx with no luck.  I also tried opening it as a package. The option doesn’t come up. 
 

it worked fine when it was on Google Drive and synced locally.  The issue arose when I downloaded it.   Google Drive zipped it first. 

Edited February 5, 2023 by ManFromNapa
Added more info

[des99]

57 minutes ago, ManFromNapa said:

it worked fine when it was on Google Drive and synced locally.  The issue arose when I downloaded it.   Google Drive zipped it first. 

Yes, when you used your local version, that hadn't been changed as you weren't using the Google Drive (corrupted) version - until you downloaded it, and now you've got the corrupted version.

If you want, zip it up (no assets like audio files) and attach it here, and I'll take a look at the file.

Edited February 5, 2023 by des99

[ManFromNapa]

48 minutes ago, des99 said:

Yes, when you used your local version, that hadn't been changed as you weren't using the Google Drive (corrupted) version - until you downloaded it, and now you've got the corrupted version.

If you want, zip it up (no assets like audio files) and attach it here, and I'll take a look at the file.

I figured it out.  Sharing what I did here so if someone else has this issue they can fix it.  

I right clicked on the *.pkgf and there was the option to unzip is, so I did.  It then created a file with nothing more than a numeric name "731506".  I added a .logicx extension and was able to open it!

[des99]

Glad you managed to recover it OK. In the future, make sure you zip up Mac files to share them on services that don't natively support the Mac filesystem, to avoid these kinds of things.

[ManFromNapa]

2 minutes ago, des99 said:

Glad you managed to recover it OK. In the future, make sure you zip up Mac files to share them on services that don't natively support the Mac filesystem, to avoid these kinds of things.

I started a new thread to inquire about services people use.  I've had good luck with Google Drive, but wanted to change the way I used it.  In the last I had certain folders sync'd locally to my MAC and used those to work from.  Lately I've been getting a localhost error, so I decided to download them so it's a 100% local copy that then gets backed up to GD.  Might change this approach.

[David Nahmani]

4 hours ago, ManFromNapa said:

I figured it out.  Sharing what I did here so if someone else has this issue they can fix it.  

Great! Good to hear and thanks a lot for sharing for others who may encounter the same issue. 🙂 

[trypsin4ever]

So I'm having a similar issue now and trying to stay calm. lol. I've used Google Drive for years so that I can work out of a folder locally and sync to the cloud. I've always been able to open up projects fine. I've always had an assumption that Google Drive's versioning would allow me to go back to an older version of a file so that I could download it. While I can't recall a time that I've ever had to use Google Drive to go find a prior version, I need to do that for a current project, because I didn't save it off as a separate file when I made drastic cuts. Version 24 of the file is what I need, but the .pkgf format I download has no way to open that I can see. Finder is removing the extension, and it recognizes it as a Logic Pro file, so I feel like I'm close, but still get the error when trying to open. There is no option to unzip this like @ManFromNapa had. I'm going to reboot and see if that does anything, but at this point I don't know how to get this older file to open. 😞 Major lesson learned here is to never rely on Google Drive for file versioning, and I'll just have to make manual copies of my files if anything major changes, and zip them as @des99suggests. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by trypsin4ever

[trypsin4ever]

...and I got it back! 😮 All I did was compress the .pkgf file inside of the Google Drive folder, moved it locally, uncompressed it, Finder gave it a random number "8712101276" with no extension, added the .logicx extension, opened it and it started to open with no error!

Needless to say, I have 3 different versions now saved in the folder. I am so relieved. Thanks for this thread. ❤️ 

[ManFromNapa]

31 minutes ago, trypsin4ever said:

...and I got it back! 😮 All I did was compress the .pkgf file inside of the Google Drive folder, moved it locally, uncompressed it, Finder gave it a random number "8712101276" with no extension, added the .logicx extension, opened it and it started to open with no error!

Needless to say, I have 3 different versions now saved in the folder. I am so relieved. Thanks for this thread. ❤️ 

Glad you were able to save your project!

[speakerfood]

Many thanks for sharing this, I encountered the same issue with Google Drive. In my case, it was caused by moving projects within Google Drive online. It doesn't happen when I move projects around within the Google Drive folder locally on my mac.

[ManFromNapa]

Yeah... I've had that issue also.  Suddenly things get weird.  Logic can't find files, etc... 

[michaelzfreeman]

Hope its OK replying to a solved topic. This seems to belong here.

I migrated from OneDrive to Nextcloud because of this problem. Nextcloud deals with Logic files by zipping them rather than using some obscure file type that no one has ever heard of. This works for Logic files, I tested it. Zipping may not work fully with some app packages but I'm not syncing those. I can extract the Logic files compressed to ".pkgf" by using Archive Utility but, absurdly, OneDrive has compressed the original Logic file with a random number name 😐. Is there a command line utility that decompresses ".pkgf" files ? Then I can use Apple Shortcuts to create a task that decompresses and renames the file to the original Logic file name. Cheers.

[michaelzfreeman]

After some sleuthing around I found that the OneDrive ".pkgf" files are simple ".tar" files !

Quote

"USTAR is the POSIX standard form of TAr"

(Quote from OSDev.org )

Rename the project to <project-name.tar> and double clicking on it extracts it. Yes this can be done with "Archive Utility.app" if its setup correctly. However I've been writing an Apple Shortcuts task to fix the random number name. Nothing extracts "pkgf" as "pkgf" effectively does not exist as a file format. It's TAR so why not call it that ? In fact Nextcloud ZIP's Logic project files and then they call them ZIP files and no one's confused 😏. Ah, the wonders of Microsoft "logic" when it comes to OneDrive and Apple 🤣