iTunes and 2 library files

[busyashell]

Hello all!...

My wife and I both have macs; she has a macbook and I a MBP. I store all our music on a lacie NAS and use an automator script on both MB's to connect to the libraries. You can read up on my setup here: http://busyashell.com/blog/articles...-itunes-library-with-multiple-macs-and-my-nas

The one problem I have is when I purchase music or download podcasts, my wife's library is not reflecting the new files and same if she purchases, I don't see them. I have to manually add them to my library. This is a major flaw in my setup described above.

How can I sync these two library files to reflect both of our changes, or is there a way for me to set up both macs to use one library file? I had thought about symlinking both macs to use a file stored on the NAS, or chronosync. Chronosync doesn't seem to be able to diff two files and append the diffs. Correct me if I'm wrong, and if I am, please point me to documentation.

The other issue I have is that this NAS is painfully slow. For some reason my wife's MB has a slightly faster pipe to the NAS than my MBP. I cannot figure out why.

Any input and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to make this setup rock solid.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

There is a way to get both Macs to use the same library file. Here's how you do it:

1. Sync the two libraries so that they're the same.
2. Copy one of them to the NAS - doesn't matter which one.
3. Delete the local library file on each machine.
4. Open the Terminal and use the ln -s command to create a symbolic link to the library's new location so iTunes knows where to find it on each machine.

Example for part 4:

ln -s /Volumes/NAS/iTunes/iTunes\ Library ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Library

Once this is done both iTunes should now use the common library file. However, there is one gotcha with this setup - you may not be able to have both iTunes open at the same time.