[HOW TO] iTunes playlists in Squeezebox Server

[aaron.haines]

Hi

I just got this working after a lot of head scratching and googling and I though it might save someone a bit of time.

First I told iTunes to create a library on the NAS in my Qmultimedia folder.

( Quick tip* - Holding shift while starting iTunes allows to select a library which means you can switch between local libraries on your PC and a library on the NAS. )

Next I enabled iTunes integration in the iTunes tab, entered the appropriate paths to the iTunes folders and left the Music folder path in the 'Basic Settings' tab blank then selected the 'clear library and rescan everything' option.

SS ( Squeezebox Server ) reported that it had scanned and imported my iTunes data but I could not get anything to show up in my library on the SS.

The key is that the filepaths hardcoded in the iTunes XML file by iTunes use the complete network path to the files including the name of the NAS.
e.g
file://localhost/myQnap410/Qmultimedia/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/musicfile.mp3

This means that when SS looks for the files on this path it can't find them and if it can't find the files it just doesn't display anything - no files, no playlists, nothing.

To fix this problem I created a sym link on the root of my NAS which pointed to the correct location.
In my case I just added a link for the NAS Name at the root so SS could resolve the path correctly. e.g.

cd /
ln -s myQnap410 /

As soon as I did that everything showed up perfectly - files and playlists.

Your setup may be slightly different, but the key point is that SS needs to be able to resolve the file paths correctly or nothing shows up.
Open up your iTunes XML file to see how it is referencing the files on your setup and create links accordingly.

Now I just have to get iTunes to scan my music library over the network without crashing !!

Hope this helps.
a.

[Padzster]

Hi
This sounds like a good solution. I've got my itunes library on \qmultimedia\music but my itunes playlists are held locally on the PC. So far I've been using a little playlist creator app to convert the itunes xml to the right format for SS to read. It also refers to the location as a physical drive so I then have to replace M:\ with Qmultimedia. It is cumbersome and manual because my itunes playlists don't show up on SS automatically.

Your solution sounds great. I have a few questions:
1. Where does your itunes playlist point to?
2. Could you define (even more simply) what you did to create a "sym link"?

Many thanks.