[macdummy]

ok so first off i did my research. i started out wanting to share my itunes library with 2 other people with user accounts on the same computer. we wanted one single library and have read/write access for each user account. so i looked up past info on this forum and found the solution. i put the itunes folder into the shared folder, changed permissions for all to read and write, made 3 aliases of the itunes folder, and then i renamed each alias folder from 'itunes alias' to 'itunes' after i placed them into the music folders of all three accounts. voila. everything worked. each account was able to access itunes and whatever was modified in account 1 was reflected in account 2 and 3 because all accounts were properly linked. thank you macnn forum archives.

but after a week or so the internal HD was getting filled up pretty quick (we listen to tons of archvied radio talk shows). we found an extra 500 gig lacie external HD at work that nobody was using so we swiped it and we decided to transfer the library onto the external and let it swell on that instead of our internal HD. so this is the part that i exit the picture. i had other things to do and the data transfer/itunes library setup was left for larry to handle. i'm not sure what he did, but when i got back the following day, he said that nothing was working properly. he got the IT guy who is pretty knowledgable on macs doing some terminal crap to help out but even he couldn't get it to work.

now it's just kinda weird in general and i'm wondering if the terminal junk screwed some stuff up (can't ask the IT guy, he left for vacation and the backup IT guy is anti-mac). because even when i'm trying to set up the external library for just my own account, nothing shows up in itunes. i go to preferences, advanced, change, (change location to external) choose the music folder and click ok. why is it that the library does not show up? i also tried doing what i did originally with the whole alias thing before the external HD even came into the picture and that did not work either.

so back to the original question, is it possible to have a single library on the external HD, and have all 3 user accounts linked to the same library? i could not find an answer in the archives or i just missed it.

[ghporter]

There's where the song files are and there's the "libarary" which is just a database of what songs iTunes is supposed to see. You can theoretically put the song files you import anywhere, such as the external disk you're using, but each user will probably have his own "library" with his own playlists and ratings and so on.

The iTunes folder will also retain all your purchased music (just the free songs I've "bought" from ITMS over the last year or so take up over 700MB). My fairly large music collection (over 2000 items-well beyond the 700MB of purchased songs) uses about 7MB of space for the library database. There's a potential divergence in the shared music storage because of where iTunes puts ITMS purchased music, but if the three of you don't buy ITMS songs regularly that shouldn't be a problem, and you can move them from the default location if you want to anyway.

[macdummy]

thanks for the response. but why is the main library still not showing up in my itunes? i have the library folder from the external HD as the pointed link under the advanced section in itunes preferences. and what you're saying is that while all three accounts can somehow have the same total amount of songs equally accessible on each itunes account from one single source, the playlists, ratings, and whatnot will all be different?