found drama

If you (like me) have dropped the little iTunes hack bomb on your system’s user accounts for maximum user sharing, please take heed of the following instructions before upgrading to new iTunes 7 shiny-ness:

1. Make a back-up copy of your iTunes Library file. (Back-up to anywhere, the Desktop is good.)
   • Normally you find this file at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
   • But if you’ve done what I’ve done, that’s just a symlink to something more like /Users/Shared/Music/Master iTunes Library
2. Download your shiny (matte?) new copy of iTunes 7 for hot upgrading action.
   • Remember where you backed-up your iTunes Library. Hopefully you won’t need it (as I did)…
3. Run the installer/upgrader. If you’re using Software Update, this is done for you. (Lucky you.)
4. IF YOU “DID WHAT I DID”: Copy that back-up of your iTunes Library file into ~/Music/iTunes to overwrite the symlink.
5. Launch iTunes and agree to the T.O.S. to get in.
6. Wait for it to update your iTunes Library. (My guess is that it’s checking all of your album artwork and updating the iTunes Library file to some new format.)
7. After iTunes has finished updating the iTunes Library file, quit the application.
8. mv /Users/$YOUR_USER_ACCOUT/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Library $YOUR_SHARED_PATH/Master\ iTunes\ Library
9. sudo chown -R root:wheel $YOUR_SHARED_PATH/Master\ iTunes\ Library
10. sudo chmod 766 $YOUR_SHARED_PATH/Master\ iTunes\ Library
11. ln -s $YOUR_SHARED_PATH/Master\ iTunes\ Library /Users/$YOUR_USER_ACCOUNT/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Library
12. Repeat step 11 for each other account that needs access to the iTunes Library. Resume enjoyment of your regularly scheduled music programming.

Hopefully you won’t need the back-up. If everything re-launches normally, you can throw it away (or burn it to disc for posterity). I expected this install to play nice with my hacked set up like all of the previous upgrades did. However, when it started throwing “iTunes can’t find the Library file” error messages, I knew something was up. Seeing system-generated backups of the Library in previously non-existent sub-folders of ~/Music was the dead giveaway. Anyhoo– TAKE WARNING!

currently playing: Violet vs. Mantronik “Burn The Elastic”

About Rob Friesel