[kent m]

Hi,
I'd like to have the iTunes Library on two accounts mirror each other. We have them pointing to the same directory for music so we don't have to mirror music files, but are tired of importing and organizing music files etc separately... we want them to be identical.

I've tried creating symbolic links in one of the Prefs directories (/Users/k/Library/Preferences/...)

for the files:

com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist
com.apple.iTunes.plist
com.apple.iTunesHelper.plist

that point to the same files in the other Prefs, hoping that iTunes would draw it's prefs from the linked set but it doesn't work, iTunes just overwrites the links with a new actual prefs file.

Any help on how we could converge the prefs so that they mirror each other with imports etc being reflected is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

best best best,
Kent M

[Tsilou B.]

Your music collection isn't saved in these preferences files, it's saved in the "iTunes Library" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" files in your "~/Music/iTunes" folder. If you create symbolic links for these files (and change the permissions for the originals and their parent folders so that they're accessible from the other account) it should work.

[kent m]

Hi,

No, Doesn't seem to work. Those are the right files (thanks for the pointer) but iTunes won't read symbolic links in place of the files. It's not a permissions issue as it won't read them even when they've been created within the same account directory.

Making a link to the iTunes dir didn't seem to work either, unless my Terminal synatx for making a symbolic link for a directory was incorrect (I used the ln -s on the dir and it seemed to make a correct link).

One issue is that when I'm attempting to navigate via the links they give a notice that they are broken...

[Tsilou B.]

I just tried it here - it worked flawlessly. I moved the two files to a directory called xyz. Then I created symbolic links to the moved files by "cd"ing to ~/Music/iTunes and entering these two commands:

ln -s xyz/iTunes\ Library iTunes\ Library
ln -s xyz/iTunes\ Music\ Library.xml iTunes\ Music\ Library.xml

I restarted iTunes and my library was displayed - everything worked perfectly. After I deleted the symbolic links the library was gone (until I moved the originals back).

[kent m]

Thanks for the assistance.

Interesting. It still fails for me. I moved the files into a directory inside of the iTunes dir and ran this:

ln -s iTunes\ Library ../iTunes\ Library
ln -s iTunes\ Music\ Library.xml ../iTunes\ Music\ Library.xml

When I start iTunes I get a Message saying that "The iTunes Music Library cannot be found or created. The default location for this file is in the "iTunes" folder in the "Music" folder."

If I dbl click on the alias' I'm told the originals can't be found, and if I open the 'Get Info' panel for one of the s links it seems to just hangs on the "More Info..." section...

What am I doing differently than you?

osx 10.4.3
iTunes 5

[kent m]

****. I've been reversing the order of the input - outputs. Let me try it the correct way...

[kent m]

heh. er, yeah... that works fine. Once I stopped commands writing I like yoda... it's all good.

Thanks for your help.

K

[SSharon]

I know it's not exactly what you asked for but I was reading about it Macworld and thought someone searching or reading this thread might be interested.

http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/15277

[kent m]

ooh, that's nifty.

thanks for the pointer.

K