iTunes and Windows Home Server

[rwmidl]

First - if this is the wrong forum for posting this question I apologize.

A few months ago I purchased my first Mac (MBP 13" which so far rocks!) In the house I have a Windows Home Server v1 running that contains all our music, pictures, backups etc. One issue I've been encountering is on my Mac, when I set in preferences the location of our music library (ex: \\servername\music) every time I reboot my Mac, iTunes reverts "back" to the "local" location where iTunes "thinks" my library is (ie local computer).

I've tried every way to reset this to keep the server location set, but nothing seems to work (deleted the pflist files, setting the server username/password on the keychain). It's not a big deal to manually reset the location, I'm just wondering if their is some permanent way for iTunes to remember where I have the library.

 

[tdar]

First - if this is the wrong forum for posting this question I apologize.

A few months ago I purchased my first Mac (MBP 13" which so far rocks!) In the house I have a Windows Home Server v1 running that contains all our music, pictures, backups etc. One issue I've been encountering is on my Mac, when I set in preferences the location of our music library (ex: \\servername\music) every time I reboot my Mac, iTunes reverts "back" to the "local" location where iTunes "thinks" my library is (ie local computer).

I've tried every way to reset this to keep the server location set, but nothing seems to work (deleted the pflist files, setting the server username/password on the keychain). It's not a big deal to manually reset the location, I'm just wondering if their is some permanent way for iTunes to remember where I have the library.

I have the same setup as your do for my server, the reason that iTunes is resetting your music location is that your music share is not mounted when iTunes starts. To fix this, look for a app called Automount maker. With it you can create a automount script that will run at logon on the Mac and mount your music folder. You HAVE to have it run before you start iTunes or it will move your file location back as you have experienced.

One other note ...it you are using Time Machine with your WHS , Lion will break it. So if you'd like to do a network Time Machine backup and have a music share that iTunes will find more to it's liking you may want to take a look at a Time Capsule. It looks like I'm going to have to get one and use it for my Mac's storage and the WHS for my Windows systems.

 

[rwmidl]

Thanks for the info. I'll check AutoMount out.

I haven't set up a scripted backup yet for Time Machine to WHS - but thanks for the heads up re: Lion.

 

[chille]

I have exactly the same setup. I have made an AppleScript that auto mounts the WHS drives at boot, and pointed iTunes media folder on my Mac to that drive.

I have also installed iTunes on the WHS, and through Home Sharing it is also possible to access all the content on the WHS through that option. I actually prefer to build my iTunes library on the WHS and use Home Sharing from my MacBook, my PC, my ATV2, iPhone and iPad - since the WHS is always on.

There is a folder called something like "Add automatically to iTunes" in the iTunes media folder, so when I wish to add something to my WHS iTunes library from my MacBook, i just copy the file to that folder on the WHS through Finder, and it instantly adds that file to the WHS library and is accessable to all devices.

It is also possible to copy media files from the WHS library to my Mac/PC just by dragging the files in iTunes when connected to the shared library.

 

[andymodem]

What version of iTunes are you running on your WHS? I have 10.2 and it keeps throwing an error and exiting the installer on me when I try to install 10.3.

Edit: Never mind, found a thread that showed what to do to install it.