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Anyone have any luck with iTunes and symbolic links?
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Atheist
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Apr 1, 2010, 01:03 PM
 
I'm yet again trying to come up with the most convenient way of splitting my iTunes library across multiple drives. I'm perfectly happy with letting iTunes manage the files (Copy files to iTune Media folder and Keep iTunes Media folder organized are both checked). I'm trying to split off the Movies folder to a separate drive so I copied it to a second 1.5TB drive and replaced the iTunes Music/Movies folder with a symbolic link pointing to the second drives Movies folder. (Nick Zitzmann's SymbolicLinker proved very handy...even though I'm a Unix guy going back to the early 80's I've grown accustomed to using GUI-based tools.)

So I start up iTunes and sure enough, the symbolic link is working as planned. If I right-click and select Show In Finder it's correctly following the link to the second drive. So far, so good. Where it breaks is when I attempt to add a new movie to the library. iTunes complains it cannot find the media folder. Seems they are using some sort of API that is not handling symbolic links properly. Snarky me would call that a bug but I'm sure Apple would say it's by design.

I'm not quite ready to buy a NAS RAID device but I may just be driven to. Anyone have any success with symbolic links and iTunes or am I just going to have to go back to manually managing my entire library?
     
Hal Itosis
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Apr 2, 2010, 09:03 AM
 
Well they work fine in Leopard... for "iTunes Music" and "Album Artwork" anyway, but i can't test Snowy yet (which it sounds like you probably have).
-HI-
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 2, 2010, 09:43 AM
 
Yeah... this is on SL 10.6.2. Glad to hear you got it working in 10.5. Seems weird they would break it intentionally.
     
fizzy
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Apr 2, 2010, 10:33 AM
 
Remove all your movies and the symbolic link -- recreate the original Movies folder. Then, add the movies back by option-dragging them into the iTunes window from your second drive. This adds them to the Media Library, but does not copy them to the Library folder. Every time you get a new movie, store it on the second drive then option-drag it from there.

(Option-dragging just reverses whatever your "copy files" setting is. Since you have yours set to copy, it doesn't copy.)

If your second drive is always connected, you'll never notice any difference. Since my Movies drive is not connected most of the time, I notice that most movies do not show their covers in Cover Flow view -- some do, some don't. I think this has to do with how the covers are added to the file, but I'm not sure. When I connect the Movies drive, they all show up. Doesn't bother me since that's the only time I really need to see them.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Apr 2, 2010, 01:10 PM
 
I use plain aliases to a networked drive, and that's worked fine for about three years now.
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 2, 2010, 01:18 PM
 
fizzy: I appreciate your response but that is exactly what I'm trying to get away from. My goal is to let iTunes copy and manage the files for me.

Spheric: Can you give me some specifics? What folder(s) are you using the alias(es) on? And just to clarify, your using an alias created by the 'Make Alias' option in the Finder contextual menu? What version of OS X?
     
Spheric Harlot
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Apr 2, 2010, 07:25 PM
 
Linking the "Music" and "Audiobooks" to a networked drive (MUST be mounted before trying to access it within iTunes) using the Finder's "Make Alias" option (or rather, Cmd-Opt-Dragging).

Before iTunes 9, it was just the "Music" folder within the iTunes folder that was an alias.

Been running that way since 10.4, obviously (as it's been set up like this for about three years).
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 2, 2010, 08:25 PM
 
Still no luck. I replaced the symbolic link with an alias as you described (cmd-opt-drag) as you can see here:

But when I attempt to add a movie to my library (with the Copy file to iTunes Media folder option checked) I get this:


Something so simple shouldn't be such a pain in the ass...
     
reader50
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Apr 2, 2010, 09:13 PM
 
How about moving the entire iTunes media folder to the extra drive officially? No symlinks required then.

iTunes Preferences -> Advanced (tab) -> iTunes Media folder location [ text box]
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 2, 2010, 11:00 PM
 
The problem is that my entire library is larger than my largest hard drive (1.5 TB). This is where Apple falls flat with their keep-it-simple ideology. They refuse to introduce more complex configuration options for fear of confusing people.
     
AKcrab
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Apr 2, 2010, 11:06 PM
 
He's trying to split his movies out onto an external drive.
     
reader50
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Apr 3, 2010, 12:02 AM
 
Use OS X softraid to put two disks together into a larger volume. This should be OK provided you have a Time Machine backup - which probably has to go to another RAID set considering the sizes involved.

Also, 2 TB drives have dropped recently. And there are persistent rumors of 2.5 TB drives about to be announced, which should help the 2 TB drives drop some more.
     
besson3c
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Apr 3, 2010, 12:34 AM
 
Lame that iTunes will not follow a symlink.

What you could try is mounting the drive into your Movies directory rather than /Volumes. That will work, and if you were to then include a symlink to your Movies directory to /Volumes this should allow the drive to show up in the Finder as normal.

The RAID 0 is not a bad idea if you have a good backup.
     
besson3c
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Apr 3, 2010, 12:34 AM
 
Just to be sure that your symlink exists, have you tried doing a:

ls -l /path/to/Movies/directory ?
     
AKcrab
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Apr 3, 2010, 01:02 AM
 
Are we sure that the OS handles symbolic links the same way it does "aliases" created with the finder?

I made an alias to /Applications and then used the terminal to create a symbolic link.. Terminal seems to treat the two differently:
Code:
[iMac:~] bbbbb% ls -als A* 1184 -rw-r--r--@ 1 bbbbb admin 301184 Apr 2 20:57 Applications 8 lrwxr-xr-x 1 bbbbb admin 14 Apr 2 20:58 Applications2 -> /Applications/ [iMac:~] bbbbb%
     
besson3c
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Apr 3, 2010, 01:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by AKcrab View Post
Terminal seems to treat the two differently:

Sorry to center you out AKcrab, but I hate it when people treat the terminal application/utility as shorthand for the Unix subsystem of OS X. The Terminal app is not responsible for the difference in the way aliases and symlinks are created.

I'm not much help as far as the differences between the two though, I don't know why Apple hasn't consolidated the two, unless an alias creates a hard link when on the same device and a symlink on a different device, or something along these lines...
     
AKcrab
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Apr 3, 2010, 01:46 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Sorry to center you out AKcrab, but I hate it when people treat the terminal application/utility as shorthand for the Unix subsystem of OS X. The Terminal app is not responsible for the difference in the way aliases and symlinks are created.
I wasn't blaming Terminal... I said one was done with the finder, one with the terminal. In the finder they look exactly the same. (except for the size of the file)

When looking at them with Terminal, they are clearly different.

I'm not exactly sure what you were trying to say, but it sounded quite condescending.

I have never claimed to be a unix geek.. That's why I put it out there as a question. I don't know WTF is going on, but something seems to be.
     
reader50
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Apr 3, 2010, 04:48 AM
 
Hard link = an extra directory entry pointing to the same data on disk. All hardlinks to the same file are peers, there is no preferred one.

Symlink = a directory pointer to another directory entry. This is an alias at the filesystem level. Should work just about everywhere, consists of nothing but a directory entry - no space allocated on disk. Can have a custom name, but not a custom icon.

Finder Alias = a minimal file on disk containing the path (as text) to another directory entry. Allocates some space on disk for data space. Can take a custom icon, since it is a real file, and thus can have a resource fork. However, the filesystem only natively sees it as a 1-block file. Higher level OS functions have to interpret it as though it were a real symlink.
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 3, 2010, 08:23 AM
 
My first attempt was with a symbolic link. When that didn't work, I tried an alias. I get the same results with both.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Apr 3, 2010, 08:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by Atheist View Post
But when I attempt to add a movie to my library (with the Copy file to iTunes Media folder option checked) I get this:
oh crap.

I've been getting a similar message, except with "volume "" could not be found", but I had no clue why - I figured it was my iPhone that was messed up and was getting ready to restore it.

It started happening with iTunes 9, I believe.

Okay, so I guess it's not working so good for me after all.
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 3, 2010, 09:37 AM
 
Thanks for the update Spheric. Looks like the symbolic link isn't going to work!

Time to send Apple some feedback.
     
besson3c
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Apr 3, 2010, 01:15 PM
 
Atheist: I would try changing the mount point of your secondary drive, as described above.

AKCrab: sorry to sound condescending, that was not my intention.
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 3, 2010, 03:52 PM
 
bess: I edited /etc/fstab via vifs and added this line:

UUID=A17CC339-8095-39AF-9167-F12F3230A7F3 /Volumes/Media\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies hfs rw 1 2

Rebooted and no luck. The drive is still mounted under /Volumes as it was before. Didn't see any messages in the console log.

Is there a command I have to run to get it to see the new fstab entry?
     
besson3c
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Apr 3, 2010, 04:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by Atheist View Post
bess: I edited /etc/fstab via vifs and added this line:

UUID=A17CC339-8095-39AF-9167-F12F3230A7F3 /Volumes/Media\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies hfs rw 1 2

Rebooted and no luck. The drive is still mounted under /Volumes as it was before. Didn't see any messages in the console log.

Is there a command I have to run to get it to see the new fstab entry?

That's not going to work, I don't think. fstab is for direct attach drives and NFS/AFP/SMB mounts, USB drives are automounted by something else.

Before you look into a way to permanently change the mount point of this USB drive, try a one time mount to see if this works... Find the device node of the USB drive:

$ diskutil list

It will probably be something like disk0s3, which would make the device node /dev/disk0s3. Then, make sure that your Movies folder you want to mount the drive in is empty (temporarily rename your old Movies folder if you have to), you cannot mount a volume to a folder that isn't empty. Then, connect the USB drive and unmount it but do not eject it:

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0s3

$ mount /dev/disk0s3 /path/to/Movies

you may or may not need to do some of these commands as root. You do for direct attach hard drives, I've never tried to do this for USB drives.
( Last edited by besson3c; Apr 3, 2010 at 04:15 PM. )
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 3, 2010, 05:08 PM
 
Sorry if I didn't make this clear but this is an internal SATA drive. As a matter of fact, I'm using 2 1.5TB drives for my iTunes Media. If you look closely at the Finder screenshot in my earlier post you will see the 2 drives (Media Library, Media Movies).

I checked the console again and did find an error:
automount: Mount for UUID=A17CC339-8095-39AF-9167-F12F3230A7F3 has no path for the directory to mount
My Media Library drive is /dev/disk2s2 and my Media Movies drive is /dev/disk1s2. I wonder if it's attempting to mount disk1s2 before disk2s2. That would explain why the path didn't exist at boot time.

I mounted the drive manually after boot and it worked. I used the command:

mount_hfs /dev/disk1s2 /Volumes/Media\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies
ls -l /Volumes/Media\ Library/iTunes\ Music returns this:

drwxrwxr-t 358 root admin 12240 Apr 3 16:45 Movies
So far so good.

I start up iTunes and all my movies show up fine and I can play them as expected. When I attempt to add a new movie to my iTunes library I get the same frickin' error!!!
     
besson3c
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Apr 3, 2010, 05:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Atheist View Post
Sorry if I didn't make this clear but this is an internal SATA drive. As a matter of fact, I'm using 2 1.5TB drives for my iTunes Media. If you look closely at the Finder screenshot in my earlier post you will see the 2 drives (Media Library, Media Movies).

I checked the console again and did find an error:


My Media Library drive is /dev/disk2s2 and my Media Movies drive is /dev/disk1s2. I wonder if it's attempting to mount disk1s2 before disk2s2. That would explain why the path didn't exist at boot time.
Unless you have your drive partitioned, the partition with the kernel/OS on it will already be mounted at boot time before other volumes listed in your /etc/fstab file are mounted. Does the directory exist, and is it empty?

I mounted the drive manually after boot and it worked. I used the command:



ls -l /Volumes/Media\ Library/iTunes\ Music returns this:



So far so good.

I start up iTunes and all my movies show up fine and I can play them as expected. When I attempt to add a new movie to my iTunes library I get the same frickin' error!!!
I'm assuming when you ls your mount you see all of the files that exist on this second drive?

If so, this is truly bizarre. Not following a symlink is very odd, as apps should just pass off these sorts of requests to a lower level where the symlink should be honored. Not working with a secondary drive mounted in the iTunes data directory is even weirder, it would have to go out of its way to see if the device node differed and then intentionally crap out or something. It shouldn't care, it should just happily write to whatever you make available to it.

Does it do this in a different OS X account?
     
Atheist  (op)
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Apr 3, 2010, 05:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Unless you have your drive partitioned, the partition with the kernel/OS on it will already be mounted at boot time before other volumes listed in your /etc/fstab file are mounted. Does the directory exist, and is it empty?
Neither of the media drives is the boot drive.

I'm assuming when you ls your mount you see all of the files that exist on this second drive?
Yes. The files show up as expected.

If so, this is truly bizarre. Not following a symlink is very odd, as apps should just pass off these sorts of requests to a lower level where the symlink should be honored. Not working with a secondary drive mounted in the iTunes data directory is even weirder, it would have to go out of its way to see if the device node differed and then intentionally crap out or something. It shouldn't care, it should just happily write to whatever you make available to it.
Yes.. this is truly bizarre. It seems iTunes is going out of its way to NOT work as expected.

Does it do this in a different OS X account?
I'm too lazy to try. At this point I'm giving up and will just manually manage my media library until I can afford to get a NAS RAID device.

Thanks to all who offered their advice!!
     
Simon
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Apr 4, 2010, 02:56 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Lame that iTunes will not follow a symlink.
This is truly lame. Especially since it appears like somebody had to put extra effort into breaking this.

I find myself trying to work around iTunes a lot lately. In that sense it feels much more like MS Office than what I'm used to from Apple software.
( Last edited by Simon; Apr 4, 2010 at 03:03 AM. )
     
TheDude2003
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May 5, 2010, 06:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Atheist View Post
Neither of the media drives is the boot drive.



Yes. The files show up as expected.



Yes.. this is truly bizarre. It seems iTunes is going out of its way to NOT work as expected.



I'm too lazy to try. At this point I'm giving up and will just manually manage my media library until I can afford to get a NAS RAID device.

Thanks to all who offered their advice!!
I’ve filed a bug with Apple regarding this, haven’t heard back yet. I have, however, found a work-around.

1) iTunes 9.1.1 will respect symlinks for existing files in your library. For example, I had my TV Shows at “Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes Media/TV Shows”. I then got a new hard drive and moved it to "Volumes/Media2/iTunes/iTunes Media/TV Shows”. Create a symlink to the new Media2/iTunes/TV Shows folder, and put it in the older Media1/iTunes/iTunes Media folder. iTunes will automatically follow the symlink to the new folder and display info or play the files.

2) iTunes 9.1.1 WILL NOT allow you to automatically add files via the symlink. You will get the “Copying files failed. The required folder cannot be found” error.

3) So you can use your existing files but can’t add new ones. Here comes the annoying workaround. Make a copy of your com.apple.iTunes.plist and keep it somewhere. Name it something like “iTunes Default.plist”. In iTunes, change the location of your iTunes Media folder to "/Volumes/Media2/iTunes/iTunes Media/“. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter if you let iTunes reorganize your media, but to be safe I’d click “no.” Make another copy of your com.apple.iTunes.plist, and name it something like “iTunes Alt.plist”

4) Now, when you want to use iTunes normally, and add everything but whatever you’ve moved to Media2, with iTunes closed make a copy of and rename “iTunes Default.plist” to “com.apple.iTunes.plist”. Move it to your “~/Library/Preferences/“ and open iTunes. If you want to add new files for whatever is on Media2, with iTunes closed make a copy of and rename “iTunes Alt.plist” to “com.apple.iTunes.plist”.

I’ve made two quick Automator apps to take care of Step 4 automatically. It depends on where you store those plists, what you name them, and the plists themselves are dependent on your own setup. So you have to make them yourself.

Couldn’t be easier!
     
desertmac
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Jun 18, 2010, 08:14 PM
 
Bump. Has anyone tested this issue in 9.2?
MBP 15" 2.4 Ghz 4Gb
MBA 13" 1.6 Ghz 2Gb
     
vimanaboy
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Jul 29, 2010, 04:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by desertmac View Post
Bump. Has anyone tested this issue in 9.2?
Just surfed-in looking for answers to this same question using iTunes 9.2.1, SL 10.6.4... so no, it does not work. This is incredibly annoying
     
Atheist  (op)
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Jul 30, 2010, 09:22 AM
 
^Thanks for testing it out. Maybe by iTunes 10.0 we'll get symbolic links.

I count myself lucky that they finally figured out how to cache the album art. It was infuriating having to wait while it reloaded every time I scrolled through my media library.
     
Atheist  (op)
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Sep 5, 2010, 07:46 PM
 
Still no luck with iTunes 10. Maybe iTunes 11?
     
ragmaxone
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Nov 13, 2010, 09:41 PM
 
same problem here, trying to find a workaround

weird that iTunes knows how to follow symlinks when reading a file but not when importing ... (importing a CD or converting a movie to iPod/Phone, AppleTV compliant)
     
Tucker28
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Jan 14, 2011, 07:35 PM
 
I too am having this exact same issue. Will bookmark for all future iTunes releases.
     
levifig
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Feb 19, 2011, 08:22 PM
 
Same thing here. And I used to do this with previous releases.

I can't believe Apple doesn't let you specify a path/volume per section (e.g. TV Shows, Movies, Podcasts, etc…). That and the ability to detect that said volume isn't mounted so files under section XPTO won't be available until you mount it.

This all seems like quite fundamental stuff, more so now that the ATV2 doesn't even have internal storage and everything needs to be on an iTunes folder PLUS the growth of SSD usage (meaning smaller main drives).


Grrrr…
     
JChaps
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Mar 6, 2011, 11:38 PM
 
I'm using a similar workaround as mentioned by TheDude2003 above. I simply swap in a different preferences plist when importing videos into iTunes, which tells iTunes that the library location is on the external volume.

It works because when you tell iTunes to keep files organized, it only tries to move them (1) on import or (2) if you manually "Consolidate Files...".

I wrote an applescript to (1) swap in the plist for external drive, (2) import videos from a specific folder, (3) ask to delete videos after import, (4) swap back to the default plist (library store on internal drive). You can download my script here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/310984/Conve...%20iTunes.scpt
     
Jasofbass
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Nov 2, 2011, 10:56 AM
 
I am using Windows and iTunes 10.5.0.142.

I am using Symbolic links in the "CUsers\%username%\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes" directory and iTunes adds the songs to the library but it duplicates them, and then when ever you start iTunes. I am guessing that iTunes creates a unique identifier each time it traverses the Symbolic link. I am not utilising the "Keep iTunes Media folder organised" or "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" features.

Anyone found a way around this?
     
ashtangiman
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Dec 30, 2011, 07:18 PM
 
I am doing a similar thing, and have been very frustrated by a slightly different problem. I put my itunes content (movies/tv/music) onto a folder on a network drive (timecapsule) which I have a wired 1gbs connection to. I moved my the same files out of their normal locations and replaced them with aliases. I then restarted iTunes and look at any item (song, movie, tv show), choosing to view in finder, and it goes to the local copies (located in a folder on my desktop called "if it works you can delete this". How is iTunes following these files around? Is this journaled FS magic?

I then chose a new library (the copy on the networked drive) and it still points to local copies. This is very interesting to me.

As for the write problems to symbolic links, could it be a permissions problem?
     
besson3c
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Dec 30, 2011, 07:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by ashtangiman View Post
I am doing a similar thing, and have been very frustrated by a slightly different problem. I put my itunes content (movies/tv/music) onto a folder on a network drive (timecapsule) which I have a wired 1gbs connection to. I moved my the same files out of their normal locations and replaced them with aliases. I then restarted iTunes and look at any item (song, movie, tv show), choosing to view in finder, and it goes to the local copies (located in a folder on my desktop called "if it works you can delete this". How is iTunes following these files around? Is this journaled FS magic?

I then chose a new library (the copy on the networked drive) and it still points to local copies. This is very interesting to me.

As for the write problems to symbolic links, could it be a permissions problem?

As long as iTunes is programmed to not detect symbolic links and treat them exceptionally, they should just be seen as the destination folder they are pointing at. The permissions of that destination path would apply. I'm assuming that Apple setup aliases to work the same way.

It sounds like iTunes is setup to detect symlinks and prohibit them by falling back on some other behavior.
     
ashtangiman
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Dec 30, 2011, 07:50 PM
 
I see . . . the permissions thing was just a hunch, its been a long time since i did any unix work.

I just deleted my local media folder and then started iTunes, and it followed the files into the trash (that is, show in finder reveals the trash as the source folder). So strange . . . I am making an image file of them (which is slow . . . is that a disk access bottleneck? seems like the logical process would be nothing) and will completely delete (empty trash). If that doesn't work I'll delete the library and rebuild from xml. I will also now try to find the appropriate thread for this . . .
     
besson3c
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Dec 30, 2011, 08:26 PM
 
It sounds like iTunes points to the actual inode of that particular folder than, rather than a hard coded path to a folder.

I guess the best that one can do is change the path to their iTunes folder in the prefs. Can this path be on a network volume?
     
chabig
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Dec 30, 2011, 08:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by fizzy View Post
Remove all your movies and the symbolic link -- recreate the original Movies folder. Then, add the movies back by option-dragging them into the iTunes window from your second drive. This adds them to the Media Library, but does not copy them to the Library folder. Every time you get a new movie, store it on the second drive then option-drag it from there.
I think this is the best way.
     
   
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