iTunes playlist / FreeNAS / Firefly / FUPPES - no joy

[msloane]

I may be a networking newbie, but I'm not an idiot.

So clearly, I must be missing something here.

I recently put aside my search for the "perfect" home NAS/media server, and took my old P4 Dell Dimension out of the basement and loaded up FreeNAS.

To my surprise (with lots of help from this blog and others), everything works.

Sort of.

I'm not quite sure I understand how iTunes is supposed to be working in this setup.

All my .mp3 files are on the server, in the Media\Music directory.

In iTunes, I see "freenas" under "Shared," and when I click on it, I see my .mp3 files, all 10,756 of them.

(Not quite sure if this happens courtesy of Firefly or FUPPES or both -- I have both of them running under FreeNAS.)

However...when I create any type of new playlist, I can't add any of the server-based songs to it.

Go ahead and laugh. I'm a big boy, I can take it...but am I missing something?

Thanks....

 

[thiggins]

I'm no iTunes expert. But off the top of my head, it's an iTunes thing. You need to set your iTunes location to the NAS directory. You can't do anything with "shared" music besides play it.

 

[msloane]

Thanks, Tim...that's the weird bit.

I did set my iTunes to the NAS's "Media\Music" directory, where all my mp3s are stored.

And iTunes didn't find any files.

Weird. I'm definitely doing something wrong...I just don't know what.

Yet.

Help!

 

[Jim.Roberts]

I don't know if this will help (I'm no iTunes expert) but I have found in the past setting up other peoples machines that even if I set the iTunes directory to where the music was it wouldn't find any. I had to import it all manually then it would work. If you physically navigate to the directory with the music in and play a file with iTunes it should 'add' it to your 'library' and make it playable. I think there is a bulk import function somewhere (it's been a while since I last saw iTunes).

If this doesn't help let me know and I'll see if I can find something else.

Jimbo

 

[thiggins]

Thanks, Jim, for chiming in.

Setting the iTunes Music folder location on the iTunes properties Advanced tab is only part of the battle. You then need to have iTunes rebuild its database, i.e. create a new Library.

(From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589) In Windows, hold down shift while starting iTunes (for Mac hold down Option) Choose "Create Library" when you get a "Choose iTunes Library" screen. iTunes should then rebuild its library database from the NAS.

 

[msloane]

iTunes / FreeNAS workaround

After putting this issue aside for a while, I decided to get back into it and see if I could finally get something working.

A Google search or two later, I stumbled upon this blog entry:

http://brockangelo.com/2008/10/25/sharing-itunes-with-multiple-users/

It's a pretty concise workaround for getting iTunes running (in a fully-functional way) using centralized network storage accessed by multiple computers (Win & Mac).

So far, it works for me.

There may be better ways to do this (if you know one, give me a shout), but for now, I'm (finally) able to build playlists and sync my iPod, which is all I really needed to do in the first place....

--Michael