[Zimwy]

Hey,
I'm trying to write a script that will tell me what music, of any format, is being played on a computer. I'm using lsof, and iTunes to play the music (aac, and mp3 files) and lsof seems to randomly show the files. I'd like to do

For instance, if I do "lsof | grep iTunes" while playing Cake's "Comfort Eagle", then I get:

Code:
iTunes     507 gtaubman   16r  VREG       14,5    5348066   934753 /Users/gtaubman/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Cake/Comfort Eagle/05 comfort eagle.mp3

But some other mp3s don't show up. Also, no aac (or m4a as iTunes calls them) show up ever. Is there any way to make this more predictable? Thanks!

gabe

PS, on a side note, what does this mean?:

Code:
27 [Optimus@~]gt % man grep
sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
/usr/bin/groff:fatal error: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Error executing formatting or display command.
system command exited with status 32768
No manual entry for grep

[Camelot]

My guess is they don't appear because the files aren't open.

iTunes will typically open a file and read it into ram, playing it from ram and leaving the file closed. Since the file isn't open, lsof doesn't see it. You're probably seeing it sometimes since you're occassionally running the script while iTunes is still reading in the file.

Surprisingly enough, given that iTunes is an Apple app, AppleScript is the easiest way to go with this:

Code:
osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to get location of current track'

-->alias Macintosh HD:Users:me:Music:iTunes:iTunes Music:Mazzy Star:So Tonight That I Might See:Fade Into You.m4p

You can get any properties of the track in this way:

If you just wanted the name of the song (not its path):

Code:
osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to get name of the current track'

Or how long this track has been playing:

Code:
osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to get player position'

length of the current track:

Code:
osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to get duration of the current track'

Play with the last two numbers and you can calculate when the next track will start, and so on.

[Camelot]

Originally posted by Zimwy:
PS, on a side note, what does this mean?:

Code:
27 [Optimus@~]gt % man grep
sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
/usr/bin/groff:fatal error: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Error executing formatting or display command.
system command exited with status 32768
No manual entry for grep

This means that the shell wasn't able to fork a new process to run man. This could be from a number of factors including insufficient ram, too many files open, or a corrupt file.

Does it work sometimes and not others? what about after a fresh boot/login?

[Zimwy]

Wow, thanks. All that itunes info is great. The only problem is that it's not always itunes that will be playing these files. Sometimes they'll be being streamed from a gnump3d server, or possibly any other form of streaming server. Any ideas for that?

Gabe

[Zimwy]

Actually, and doing that osascript doesn't work either. I made sure I escaped the quotes and everything, but it still returns nothing. I echo the command it's executing, and then the results, and I get a perfect osascript line, and then NOTHING. If I do it in the terminal, it works fine. Grrrr. I've tried exec, shell_exec, and ``s.

gabe

[Camelot]

Originally posted by Zimwy:
Actually, and doing that osascript doesn't work either. I made sure I escaped the quotes and everything, but it still returns nothing. I echo the command it's executing, and then the results, and I get a perfect osascript line, and then NOTHING. If I do it in the terminal, it works fine. Grrrr. I've tried exec, shell_exec, and ``s.

gabe

Clearly if it works in the terminal, the script is valid and works.

How are you trying to call the script?

[Zimwy]

Here's what I do:

[PHP]
$toExec = "osascript -e 'tell application \"iTunes\" to get name of the current track'";
$mp3s = `$toExec`;
echo ($mp3s);
[/PHP]
I've also tried: $mp3s = exec($toExec);
and $mp3s = shell_exec($toExec);
and neither work.

The thing is that if I do
[PHP]
$toExec = "uptime";
$uptime = `$toExec`;
echo ($uptime);
[/php]
then it works fine. Very frustrating.

gabe

[ul1984]

Originally posted by Zimwy:
Here's what I do:

[PHP]
$toExec = "osascript -e 'tell application \"iTunes\" to get name of the current track'";
$mp3s = `$toExec`;
echo ($mp3s);
[/PHP]
I've also tried: $mp3s = exec($toExec);
and $mp3s = shell_exec($toExec);
and neither work.

The thing is that if I do
[PHP]
$toExec = "uptime";
$uptime = `$toExec`;
echo ($uptime);
[/php]
then it works fine. Very frustrating.

gabe

i would say it doesnt work cus, httpd is running under another user than ure logged in as.

osascript cant send events to apps thats running under a different user than itself, unless u put sudo infront of it,
but for that to work ud have to add the user "www" to /etc/sudoers
but dont do that, cus of big security issues.

however what u could do(i think) is add this to /etc/sudoers

www ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/osascript

that will allow the www user run osascript as root, without typing a password...

im not a security expert of any kind, so dont blame me if this causes any trouble, im sure there are other ways to do it tho...

good luck