iTunes problems with shared music

[blue-lion]

hello, i want to set up my mac to allow 3 different users to access there own apps,etc in their own iTunes accounts but also allow them access to a common music folder in users/shared folder, i am the administrator and everything works ok for me. However, when i log on as someone else i am getting messages saying there are 'privilege errors' . i've checked the apple documentation and it suggests changes the music folders read/write privileges with unix command

sudo chmod -R 1777 /Users/Shared

this makes me a little nervous...

As anybody else done this successfully? , and another thing troubling me is..
i now believe there will be a set of .itl and .xml library files in each iTunes user account , how do all these keep up to date and synchronise with each other?.
if say user 1 adds to the common music library , and then user 2 adds something else ?,etc. , do you see my concern?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

hello, i want to set up my mac to allow 3 different users to access there own apps,etc in their own iTunes accounts but also allow them access to a common music folder in users/shared folder, i am the administrator and everything works ok for me. However, when i log on as someone else i am getting messages saying there are 'privilege errors' . i've checked the apple documentation and it suggests changes the music folders read/write privileges with unix command

sudo chmod -R 1777 /Users/Shared

this makes me a little nervous...

As anybody else done this successfully? , and another thing troubling me is..
i now believe there will be a set of .itl and .xml library files in each iTunes user account , how do all these keep up to date and synchronise with each other?.
if say user 1 adds to the common music library , and then user 2 adds something else ?,etc. , do you see my concern?

Yes. I see where you are coming from. If you're nervous about using the Terminal, the good news is for this, you don't have to. Navigate in the Finder to the shared folder in question, perform a Get Info on it, then expand the Ownership and Permissions section. Unlock if necessary then change all three fields (user, group, and other) to Read & Write if they aren't already set that way. Then, click the Apply to All button and confirm that you wish to do this. That will get your permission problems sorted out.

As for your second question, I do not know of a good way to do this... but there are some workarounds you can use. One is to simply tell iTunes to open the shared folder and import into its library anything new it finds, periodically. Another approach involves a little AppleScriptery - basically, you write an AppleScript for this task and install it in each user's iTunes Scripts folder.

 

[blue-lion]

thanks for your help. I'll give it a try