US RNCs fail to find catalog

[requiem]

I'm encountering a "Failed to Find New Catalog: http://www.charts.noaa.gov..." error for all of my RNC, Pilot Charts, and GSHHG basemap catalog entries.

System: Mac OS 10.15.7, OpenCPN 5.2.4

I upgraded from 5.0 to 5.2.0 a few months ago, noticed that it seemed unable to load any of my charts, but over time was able to restore a few of them including ENCs. However, the other types all seem to be unable to load the catalogs, even after deleting and re-adding the catalogs, reindexing, etc. I've just now tried removing 5.2.0 and running the installer for 5.2.4, but the issue appears to persist.

The URL it lists also appears to be valid, as I can manually download from there, e.g. "http://www.charts.noaa.gov/RNCs/CA_RNCProdCat.xml"

In the opencpn.log file I see the following entries:

09:52:20.623 ERROR filefn.cpp:1156 File '/Users/requiem/Documents/Charts/RNC/US_CA/CA_RNCProdCat.xml' couldn't be removed (error 1: Operation not permitted)
09:52:20.623 ERROR filefn.cpp:1042 Impossible to overwrite the file '/Users/requiem/Documents/Charts/RNC/US_CA/CA_RNCProdCat.xml' (error 0: Undefined error: 0)

The file permissions for CA_RNCProdCat.xml are 600, identical to its ENC counterpart, which would appear to rule out an access issue to the Documents folder hierarchy.

Edit: renaming the file appears to allow the updates to work, so I now have a path forward, but that doesn't seem to address the "why".

[hreuver]

You give very few clues:
- it does not work with the permissions set to 600
- it works after renaming

What was the old name?
What is the new name?
Who is the owner of the files?
Have the permissions changed?
What permissions are available for the directory?
Are new files created?

Normally I'd use 755 for the directory and 644 for the files.
In case of problems you could make it public (permissions 777 / 666) or change the owner to the opncpn user.

But that still says nothing about the problem you faced.

[requiem]

I agree, few clues indeed. I think I cover your questions below. The only odd parts I see are:

1. the catalog file receives different permissions from the other files
2. sometimes extended attributes are written
3. the problem doesn't impact the ENC catalogs, just the others

----
Yes, new files are created. For the permissions, the RNC/US_CA directory has 755. When I manually create a file in the same directory it receives permissions 644 (and my umask is 0022). I have not made any changes to the permissions, and the user/group ownership of everything is the same as shown below.

After noticing the file couldn't be overwritten in the logs, I simply renamed it via "mv CA_RNCProdCat.xml CA_RNCProdCat.xml.bak" and tried again. Now I have the following:

-rw-------@ 1 requiem staff 149120 Nov 11 10:09 CA_RNCProdCat.xml
-rw------- 1 requiem staff 149058 Feb 1 2020 CA_RNCProdCat.xml.bak

So, OpenCPN is able to create files, meaning the directory permissions are not blocking it. I've just now clicked "update" in the chart downloader again, and it updated the last-modified timestamp on the file to Nov 12, which tells me the file permissions also are not blocking.

The only odd part is the newly created file has extended attributes and the older one does not. When I refresh the catalog for the ENC/US_CA directory the CA_ENCProdCat.xml does not have any extended attributes, and was able to be overwritten. It too receives permissions 600, whilst the other files in both RNC and ENC locations have permissions 644:

drwxr-xr-x 25 requiem staff 800 Nov 12 09:53 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 requiem staff 384 Sep 14 22:43 ..
-rw-r--r--@ 1 requiem staff 6148 Sep 14 22:35 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r--@ 1 requiem staff 3133 Jan 10 2020 CATALOG.031
-rw------- 1 requiem staff 146480 Nov 12 09:53 CA_ENCProdCat.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 requiem staff 2804 Oct 8 04:51 README.TXT
drwxr-xr-x 20 requiem staff 640 Nov 12 10:14 US2WC05M
drwxr-xr-x 16 requiem staff 512 Nov 12 10:14 US3CA52M
...

[hreuver]

I must apologize, I read over the part that states it is about MacOS.

It is not for me to advise you on Apple. I'm sure you know more about Apple and extended attibutes (xattr) than me. I hope others can help you out here.

[artjohnston]

I'm assuming you know by now:
The reason that you are getting this error message is that the NOAA RNC maps are being cancelled and you were unfortunate to find that your requested maps are already gone. I would suggest trying to find an archive of the RNC maps (I have some) and let me know which ones you are looking for.
I would ask that some of the OpenCPN programmers address this issue. And you wil find the ENC maps are very poor quality (though undoubtedly the few features on there have pinpoint accuracy....

[hoolie]

Originally Posted by artjohnston

... And you wil find the ENC maps are very poor quality (though undoubtedly the few features on there have pinpoint accuracy....

That seems a very sweeping statement. I know nothing of NOAA maps as they're out of my area but I really cannot imagine that the principal provider of charts for the USA is offering ENC charts that do not meet international standards for commercial shipping.
Please explain... ...