Move playlist location for iTunes

moonbeach · Sun Jun 03, 2007 12:04 am

This must have been discussed millions of times... sorry, but cannot find what I'm looking for. I have just converted an old PC to a home server (with biiiiig hard drive). I now changed the music file location for iTunes (on my main PC) to a new folder on the server, then did a consolidate all files. This worked fine and now all songs are on the server. I have bonjour/firefly installed on the server and I'm also able now to access the server files from the soundbridge. But not the playlists... these are still on my main PC under ...\documents...\music\itunes... and that's where iTunes looks for them. Now I could move the .xml files manually to the server... but then whenever I change a playlist or add/delete, it would only update on the main PC right? I want iTunes to manage the playlists in the same server folder as the music files are... how can?

rpedde · Sun Jun 03, 2007 1:51 pm

moonbeach wrote:
This must have been discussed millions of times... sorry, but cannot find what I'm looking for. I have just converted an old PC to a home server (with biiiiig hard drive). I now changed the music file location for iTunes (on my main PC) to a new folder on the server, then did a consolidate all files. This worked fine and now all songs are on the server. I have bonjour/firefly installed on the server and I'm also able now to access the server files from the soundbridge. But not the playlists... these are still on my main PC under ...\documents...\music\itunes... and that's where iTunes looks for them. Now I could move the .xml files manually to the server... but then whenever I change a playlist or add/delete, it would only update on the main PC right? I want iTunes to manage the playlists in the same server folder as the music files are... how can?

Couple things you need to do. One is to make sure the firefly server is logging in as you, rather than as an account that only has access to the local machine.

Do that by going into control panel -> admin tools -> services, finding the firefly service and viewing properties on it. Go to the logon tab, and change it from "local system" to your user account and password. Then stop and start the firefly server.

Keep your music directory pointed to the "My Music" folder, and see what that does.

-- Ron

moonbeach · Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:10 am

Ok... but I want to run soundbridge/firefly from my server without the main computer (the one where the playlists now reside...) turned on. So I think I somehow need to have the playlist files reside on the server. Or am I really getting something wrong here....?

rpedde · Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:08 pm

moonbeach wrote:
Ok... but I want to run soundbridge/firefly from my server without the main computer (the one where the playlists now reside...) turned on. So I think I somehow need to have the playlist files reside on the server. Or am I really getting something wrong here....?

OOOoooooh... now I get you.

There are several ways to make that go.

The way I do it (from a mac, but same principle) is to use my main pc as a ripping station and keep the music local to that machine. Then I syncronize the music (including the iTunes music Library.xml file) to my nas, which runs the server my soundbridge uses.

I use rsync, but Unison works pretty good on windows, and you can set it up in a batch file or something and run it at scheduled intervals using hte built-in task scheduler, or by putting a shortcut to the batch file in your startup group or something.

I like this way because it also gives me a backup of my music, something I'm really paranoid about losing.

Another way would be to just copy the local iTunes Music Library.xml file over to the server periodically. A batch file something like:

copy "%USERPROFILE%\My Music\iTunes Music Library.xml" \\server\mp3

would probably do it. You could put that on your desktop and just run it whenever you rip new music or want to update your playlists, or like the other, put it in your startup group or in your scheduled tasks.

There are a couple other ways, including one with using TweakUI to move your "My Music" folder to a location on the server and then symlinking the xml file to a place in the firefly music directory that it can parse it, but that's more involved. Works pretty spiffy, though, so let me know if you want more info on that, or if these other ideas won't fly.

-- Ron

guysivey · Sun Jun 10, 2007 10:46 am

Excellent work, Ron. Been using Firefly for a year or so now, and it is the dog's bollocks.

Variation on the above - I do pretty much the same thing, but I only rescan firefly whenever I have created a new itunes library. It can be unchanged for weeks. Can I add a command line instruction to the copy batch file, which tells firefly or sqlite to do a rescan? So I don't have to separately load the web interface and click on rescan?

I know I could set firefly to rescan every x minutes, and wait for the next rescan, but a) I don't like it to be doing rescans unecessarily, and b) I want my just-purchased CD to be on the Roku NOW!
Guy

rpedde · Sun Jun 10, 2007 10:07 pm

guysivey wrote:
Excellent work, Ron. Been using Firefly for a year or so now, and it is the dog's bollocks.

I'm going to assume that's a good thing.

Can I add a command line instruction to the copy batch file, which tells firefly or sqlite to do a rescan? So I don't have to separately load the web interface and click on rescan?

Sure... you'll need something that can do a web request from a command line, though. If you find yourself something like wget for windows, you can dump that in \windows\system32, and then add a line like:

wget http://admin:mt-daapd@nslu2-server:3689/xml-rpc?method=scan

You'll need to change the admin_pw, hostname, and port, obviously, but that should do it. Oh. And if you want to force a full scan, add "&full=1" to the end of that. (without the quotes, obviously).

It will probably drop a the output of that command (an xml status report) to a file. You can probably do something like:

wget -o NUL http://admin:mt-daapd@nslu2-server:3689/xml-rpc?method=scan

to get it to toss the output to the bit bucket. No promises, though... I haven't tested that on win32.

-- Ron

guysivey · Mon Jun 11, 2007 3:12 pm

Thanks, Ron. I'll give it a try when things have settled down. Some little server issues at present.
Guy
PS the DB is a bit like the cat's whiskers. Or the bees knees. Only better.

guysivey · Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:51 am

Hello Ron,
Is there some documentation of the commands and responses for Firefly when you communicate with it in this way?

I am getting what looks like an invalid method - the result file has a one line entry like this:-

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><results><status>500</status><statusstring>Invalid method</statusstring></results>

which seems to suggest that method=scan is not a valid method?

The login always seems to fail first time (401 unauthorized) and succeeds second time (200 OK), but I am not sure this is connected.
Guy

rpedde · Thu Jun 21, 2007 8:44 pm

guysivey wrote:
Hello Ron,
Is there some documentation of the commands and responses for Firefly when you communicate with it in this way?

Not really...

some here: http://trac.fireflymediaserver.org/wiki/xmlrpc

Well, and here (http://trac.fireflymediaserver.org/brow ... /xml-rpc.c) of course...

But it needs to be updated.

And it's "rescan", not "scan". Sorry.

-- Ron

guysivey · Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:14 am

This works a treat now, Ron. If anyone is interested, the batch file to do it looks like this:-

echo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>log1.txt
date /t >>log1.txt
time /t >>log1.txt
copy "C:\Documents and Settings\Guy\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl" "Y:\My Music\empty_dummy" >>log1.txt
copy "C:\Documents and Settings\Guy\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml" "Y:\My Music\empty_dummy" >>log1.txt
wget -o log2.txt http://guysivey:xxpwdxx@srvr:9999/xml-rpc?method=rescan
copy gslogfile.txt + cr.txt + log1.txt + log2.txt + "xml-rpc@method=rescan" gslogfile.txt
del log1.txt
del log2.txt
del "xml-rpc@method=rescan"

I am sure it could be made more elegant, but for a refugee from DOS, this was easy to cobble together, and maintains a log for me of all the updates I ran. Thanks for your help, Ron.
Guy

brunjest · Sun Aug 05, 2007 6:13 am

I have read this posting and it is related to what I want to do, but rather than have a periodic sync process, is there anyway to just have the clients point to a common area on the SLUG/USB drives that they all share??

I would rather have all clients share the same area on the SLUG/USB drives.

I have moved my itunes library to c:\data\shared music on my current pc and that worked so I was assuming I could move it to a server directory and it would still work.

I have not yet purchased my slug, waiting for a week in September after kids go back to school.

My wish is to
- have Firefly run on SLUG with 2 USB drives, for mirror of first drive
- have 2 libraries on USB drives, one for my WMP library, second for my kids iTunes library
- have the iTunes clients point to the files on the SLUG server, so that if playlists added/songs purchased, everything done on the SLUG USB drives.
- have the WMP clients point to the files on the SLUG server, so that if playlists added/songs purchased, everything done on the SLUG USB drives.
- have a backup run nightly that backsup the SLUG USB drive 1 to drive 2

This allows me to
- turn off client machines without breaking the Soundbridge connections
- everyone in house to share one iTunes libary and/or one WMP library, kids can have their pcs pointing to one library.
- reduces energy consumption
- keeps a mirrored backup of the Music library. currently using Genie-Soft
- stop running media-connect on my client pc
- stop having to run iTunes on my client pc .

Questions
- will this approach work? anyone else already doing this and have suggestions?
- other suggestions to backup approach, like how to prevent deletes, since I am ONLY adding files
- any suggestions for USB drives, anything to watch out for, I have heard that some USB drives do not shutdown so they are more prone to early failure
- I assume the Itunes clients and WMP clients just access the server via file system, No usage of firefly for them. Is that correct?
- I assume that Soundbridge accesses the USB drives via Firefly server running on SLUG/Debian. That they can access the podcasts originally provided by iTunes. Is that correct?

thx,

Todd

rpedde · Sun Aug 05, 2007 12:07 pm

brunjest wrote:
I have read this posting and it is related to what I want to do, but rather than have a periodic sync process, is there anyway to just have the clients point to a common area on the SLUG/USB drives that they all share??

Cross posted to here: http://forums.fireflymediaserver.org/vi ... php?t=6360

guysivey · Thu Aug 09, 2007 2:31 pm

brunjest wrote:
Questions
- other suggestions to backup approach, like how to prevent deletes, since I am ONLY adding files

I use Syncback from 2brightsparks, which has plenty of options for different types of backup for different folders. Only problem I have found is it sometimes forgets the profiles you have set up. But you can export (save) them, so do this for your own sanity.

Guy

guysivey · Thu Aug 09, 2007 2:37 pm

brunjest wrote:
Questions
- I assume the Itunes clients and WMP clients just access the server via file system, No usage of firefly for them. Is that correct?

iTunes as a host will access a server via the OS, but as a client it either needs another instance of iTunes running as a server, or something like Firefly to emulate iTunes as a host. Not clear what you mean by iTunes client, so might be stating the obvious.

Guy

Move playlist location for iTunes

Move playlist location for iTunes

Re: Move playlist location for iTunes

General Approach to Music Server and Clients

Re: General Approach to Music Server and Clients

Re: General Approach to Music Server and Clients

Re: General Approach to Music Server and Clients

Who is online