iTunes Library on NAS .. where does library.xml go?

[mjt2810]

Hi all. Hopefully someone will have the answer as I have searched high and low on this one.

I have moved ALL my iTunes content (music, videos etc) to the Shared Music folder on my new WD MyBook World Edition 2 (just in case that's relevant info) and everytime my Mac attempts to load iTunes I have to repeatedly direct it to the library.xml file in the Shared Music folder.

Surely there's a proper solution for this? Anyone else out there had this experience and has figured it out.

I've noticed that it does this only the first time I open iTunes up, any subsequent bootup within a session is fine, but any restart of my Macbook Pro and I have to repeat this.

The music location etc is all preferenced in the /Volumes/Public/Shared Music/iTunes Music ....

All help greatly appreciated!!

M.

 

[ChrisA]

Have you looked on the iTunes preferences panel? There is a field where you specify the location of the iTunes library.

Also I don't know how you moved the music. Hopefully you simply moved the entire iTunes folder all at once

 

[mjt2810]

Have you looked on the iTunes preferences panel? There is a field where you specify the location of the iTunes library.

Also I don't know how you moved the music. Hopefully you simply moved the entire iTunes folder all at once

Chris, thanks for that. Yes, that's where I have moved the folder to.

It was originally running on an external USB disk I just plugged in and out, and all worked well. The NAS has a copy function that quickly lifted and placed the music in the Shared Music folder.

M.

 

[wkearney99]

Be aware that itunes will have trouble recognizing the tracks from a network share. It will decide the tracks are 'missing' and put an ! mark on them. But they will actually play. This bug is very annoying if you try using an iPod running the Remote app. The track won't play at all. And then a while bunch of other tracks will suddenly start showing up as ! missing too. Nasty bug.

 

[jmpage2]

Be aware that itunes will have trouble recognizing the tracks from a network share. It will decide the tracks are 'missing' and put an ! mark on them. But they will actually play. This bug is very annoying if you try using an iPod running the Remote app. The track won't play at all. And then a while bunch of other tracks will suddenly start showing up as ! missing too. Nasty bug.

I have never seen this bug and I have been had my music on a network share for years.

I did just make the big change of moving my actual library data over to the network share, deleting it on the Mac and then starting up iTunes with the "option" button, then selecting the Library on the network share.

The network share device in my case is a Windows Home Server that runs other additional services such as Squeezebox Server.

One of the reasons for my moving the library itself is so that Squeezebox and other applications on the WHS have direct, current access to my iTunes data.

The only question I have is whether having the Mac access the data and update things its way (Library.xml) will cause problems or loss of data when the iTunes Music Library.XML is accessed and updated by other services on the Windows box.

 

[wkearney99]

I have never seen this bug and I have been had my music on a network share for years.

That was my past experience too. But not as of version 9 of iTunes. They've introduced a serious bug in v9 and have not fixed it.

The only question I have is whether having the Mac access the data and update things its way (Library.xml) will cause problems or loss of data when the iTunes Music Library.XML is accessed and updated by other services on the Windows box.

The itunes data files are not expected to be simultaneously accessed. Few database files are unless their software specifically supports it and itunes isn't one of them.

 

[jmpage2]

That was my past experience too. But not as of version 9 of iTunes. They've introduced a serious bug in v9 and have not fixed it.

I'm on iTunes 9. What is the network share path showing in your library.xml file to all of your music? I would recommend comparing that to what you see for mounted network volumes when you run the 'df' command in the Terminal.

The itunes data files are not expected to be simultaneously accessed. Few database files are unless their software specifically supports it and itunes isn't one of them.

This is what I was expecting and it turns out that it is actually recommended for the plugin I was going to use NOT to do live updating of the iTunes database under certain conditions, which unfortunately my installation meets.

I have just reverted back to running the library on my Mac, with the media on the server. I will make manual copies of the XML file available to the server for use in server applications, there just won't be any synchronization of data between the two.