When you open a library, EagleFiler checks that all the files and notes are present. The Verify command does this, and it additionally checks that their contents are what EagleFiler was expecting. To verify the entire library, select the Records source and choose Verify. You can also verify individual files or folders.
Detecting File Corruption
Verification can help you detect file corruption before it becomes a serious problem. For example, if there is damage to your disk and a file becomes corrupt, you’ll learn of the problem as soon as you use the Verify command. Without Verify, you would only learn of the problem when you tried to access the file (perhaps a long time in the future), and perhaps not even then, because the corruption might not be readily apparent. Because you learn about the damage early, you can restore a correct version of the file from a backup, rather than filling your future backups with damaged copies of the file.
How Verification Works
In order to detect when files have changed, EagleFiler stores a checksum of each file. If EagleFiler reads a file and calculates the same checksum that it got before, it knows that the file has not changed. Thus, if the file was in good condition before, it is still in good condition. If EagleFiler calculates a different checksum, that means that the file’s contents are different.
Sometimes, the checksum should be different. For example, when you edit a file, you intentionally change its contents, resulting in a different checksum. When you edit a file within EagleFiler, EagleFiler automatically updates its stored checksum to match the file’s new contents. Thus, if you only edit files using EagleFiler, the checksums will always be in sync with the files’ contents, and any checksum that doesn’t match means that the file is damaged.
EagleFiler also allows you edit files using other applications. For example, you can double-click a Microsoft Word document to open it in Word, make some changes, and choose File ‣ Save. In this case, the file has changed, but there is no way for EagleFiler to know that this is because of what you did in Word. The changes could have been due to damage. Thus, if you edit a file outside of EagleFiler, you must use the Update Checksum command to tell EagleFiler that the file’s current contents are correct. EagleFiler will then update its stored checksum to match.
Using the Verify Command
Verify is a specialized feature for people who want extra data integrity protection. If you don’t need this, or if you frequently edit files outside of EagleFiler and don’t want to have to Update Checksum, then you can simply ignore the Verify command. EagleFiler will then behave like a normal Mac application: it won’t complain about files being different than it expected, but neither will it detect when they are damaged.
A verification can fail with two different types of errors:
This means that you had a file in your library, but it is no longer where EagleFiler expects to find it. Probably the file (or a containing folder) was renamed, moved, or deleted using an application other than EagleFiler. (As described in the Library Folders section, you should not do this.)
The Errors window shows the expected name of the file, and you can click Reveal to show its expected folder in the Finder or Reveal in Library to show its expected folder in EagleFiler.
If you can find the file in the Finder (or in a backup), use the Finder to move back to the expected folder. Then EagleFiler will be able to find it again.
If you cannot find the file, you click the Trash button to delete it in EagleFiler and then empty the trash so that EagleFiler stops looking for it.
If you have reorganized the files in the Finder and cannot move them back to their proper locations, as a last resort you can rebuild the library to tell EagleFiler that you like everything the way it is now. However, this will lose metadata such as custom titles, from names, and notes for files that have been moved.
To quickly delete a large number of verification errors, choose Edit ‣ Select All and then press the Delete key.
Repairing File Ownership and Permissions
In addition to detecting damaged file content, the Verify command can optionally fix file metadata problems. See the FixOwnershipWhenVerifying and FixPermissionsWhenVerifying options in the esoteric preferences.