This is really great! Is there anyway to do this with iPhoto?

[ Reply to This | # ]

I am in the process of writing this up. The same idea (setting unix group permissions of the shared folder on launch of the program through a script that runs as root). Will post it on my site and write it to Rob as soon as its done. <br>


[ Reply to This | # ]

not sure what the other hints cover but i had to do this the other day for a client and it only involved a few steps--

1- get info on your itunes music folder and give permission to everyone (including everything else inside)

2- make an alias of the itunes stuff

3- log into other account and copy those aliases over to your itunes stuff.. bam, that's it..

now when they log on they'll get your music library, playlists, etc.. they can rate stuff, make new playlists and so on


[ Reply to This | # ]

But they can't implement changes on any new songs that are added by the original user.

[ Reply to This | # ]

this obvious approach works fine, of course, until the day one of the users imports a new song into itunes. These songs cannot be changed or deleted by anyone else but by who originally imported them

furthermore, in this scenario, user A cannot change e.g. a playlist created by user B. You would have to manually change permissions every once in a while to prevent these problems.

not exactly clean and useful me thinks, hence i wrote that guide

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cron. Learn it, love it. :)

[ Reply to This | # ]

I set my iBook up like this a few months ago when I turned it into a music server connected up to real speakers. I have 2 users on there; an admin user and an iTunes user with extremely limited access. Both users can add / edit / delete iTunes songs and it syncs to my iPod with no problems. My favorite part though, is that I changed Apache to run as the iTunes user (security vulnerability, I know, but as it's on my local network I'm not worried) and I wrote a web based interface to iTunes which I can control from any computer on the network. It's a great little jukebox setup.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Anybody that's ready to do a clean install might want to consider designating a separate partition for all of the shared iTunes music and iPhoto pictures. I called mine "media". Then "Get Info" on the media partition and check "Ignore ownership on this volume". Then the only necessary step from this original hint is to create aliases from the respective Music and Pictures (for iPhoto) folders in each user's directory. No scripts, no permission changes, etc. Anyone can add/delete/modify anything on this volume, as the system will show everything as being owned by them.

This won't take care of the issue of multiple iTunes running at the same time. For that the script is needed.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Looks pretty good, but wouldn't it be easier to just have startiTunes.sh run at login? That way users can just run iTunes normally.

Also, (and forgive me if this is a dumb question; I'm not familiar with Applescript), is there any way to read the source to StartiTunes.app? If not, how about posting the code instead of the compiled executable?


[ Reply to This | # ]

I will post the Applescript code, its just a one liner, check the page soon

as for the "do it on login":

yup, thats all good under mac os x 10.2. you can use "Login Items" or "Startup Items" (forgot the correct name) under System Preferences to configure to run the script

BUT

you would also need to go via an Applescript app that is calling the unix script as the Startup Items pref pane doesnt eat any shell scripts.


Under Mac OS X 10.3, this would plainly not work, because of "Fast User Switching". Ok it would work the first time a user logs in using Fast User Switching (the Startup items are executed that time). But on any subsequent switches, the permissions would not be changed (startup items are not executed anymore)

hence the need to do it upon launch of the application.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I put the shared iTunes Music folder in the shared folder and set the user to root, group to staff and set the sticky bit. Check out man chmod and man sticky to learn more about sticky directories. This way the music I import can only be edited or deleted by me and the music others import can only be edited or deleted by the them. The only problem I can see is if one user imports an artist another user can't import that same artist because they can't modify that artist's folder. But this hasn't been a problem for me.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Has anyone yet managed to do the same with iTunes for Windows ?? The songs can be shared, however, I couldnt figure out how to share the "Library.xml" file so that rating, playlists, etc. also remain shared.




[ Reply to This | # ]

Captnswing

Your step by step guide no longer seems to be at that location.
Can you please redirect us?
Also, is it relevant to Mac OS X etc

Thanks, Assaf.

[ Reply to This | # ]