Bugzilla – Bug 17591
iTunes integration broken with iTunes 10 and SBS 7.7
Last modified: 2011-10-24 05:49:42 UTC
Created attachment 7478 [details] iTunes music library. I upgraded my Mac to iTunes 10 and, shortly afterwards upgraded SBS from 7.5.x to 7.6 and eventually 7.7. In all post 7.5.x releases my iTunes integration is broken. I have been using iTunes integration on SBS for years and it has worked. I simply enable the iTunes Integration option in SB Server and point it to a network share iTunes Music Library.xml file as well as the music path where all of the music resides. Historically this has picked up all of my tracks as well as my iTunes playlists. Life was good. Now, when I do the same thing with iTunes 10.x and SBS 7.7, I observe that scanning "finishes" after just a few minutes and only about 10% of my library is shown. Regardless of SBS version, etc, it always terminates at about 1500 tracks, 400 artists, etc, when my library is actually 10,000+ tracks, 800+ artists, etc. I have attached a sample of the iTunes Library to this bug report. Would love to see this fixed so I can go back to using iTunes integration with SBS on my Windows Home Server. In SBS Server settings, I set it to iTunes integration, point it to the XML file via UNC path name (example, \\bogart\public\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.XML) and set the iTunes music share as UNC path \\bogart\Music\.
Also see bug 15703 as there was a problem initially with how UNC paths worked in iTunes integration but with workarounds mentioned in tho bug report, was able to get it working and it had been working for a very long time until 7.6 came out.
Just so I understand your setup, you are running SBS on WHS and accessing your Mac iTunes library over a share? Any reason not to just run SBS on the Mac? Possibly one problem is that you are using 2 different shares, "public" for the XML and "Music" for the files. That may be something worth testing (put the XML and music on the same share).
Hi Andy, Not sure where you are seeing the references in the library to a second share. All of my music is on a single share. I don't run SBS on the Mac because it sucks a lot of power. I have a WHS and a Synology NAS in my network, and for quite a while I have been running SBS on the WHS. So, what I have been doing is taking the XML library from the Mac, and copying it over to the Synology, which is the same place that the music resides (/Volumes/Music/). This is reachable on the network with UNC pathname \\bogart\ so I just tell SBS that the library is at \\bogart\public\itunes\library.xml and that the music is at \\bogart\music\ and it has been working fine for a long time. It is still partially functional as it does discover about 1500 of my tracks and they can be played, but for some reason at that point in the scanning it simply halts, and does not pick up the rest of the library. If you look at the older bug I filed in 2009 around a similar issue, there was a quick and easy resolution which was simply to put the UNC pathname of the music into the music path of the iTunes preferences, which got things working at the time (and had been working through various 6.x upgrades over the past couple of years). If this is not supported, I understand (although it would be a bummer). In the interim I have simply pointed SBS on the WHS to the \\bogart\music path and manually exported my iTunes playlists, and it is working (although I have encountered other bugs since doing that). Thanks again for taking a look at this, if there's anything you'd like me to try let me know.
Tested with RC4, still broken.
Andy, I just wanted to give you an update on this. It has been knocking around in the back of my head what you had said about using two library sources.... see, the music library was always "halting" during scan in the same place and what you said had me wonder if somehow I was missing something that had changed in my library. I investigated and found a single straggler audio track that was stuffed into the local iTunes music folder on my PC, instead of being on the network like the rest of the music. I moved this track, updated the library, and now everything appears to be scanning correctly. Sorry for the trouble and confusion with this, at some point between my last scan and all of the updates I did I must have purchased this track and it got stuffed into the wrong place. It appears to be fixed up fine now, and hopefully continues to work. Thanks again, J
Could you please share that file with us? It might allow us to understand what was killing the scanner. Thanks!
Once I moved the file to the network share that has my music on it, the problem went away. So I don't think that the problem was the file name necessarily, but perhaps the fact that there was a second "location" being referenced in the iTunes Library XML file. This is the file now, in the new location; <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/Music/Jessie%20Ware%20&%20Sampha/Valentine%20-%20Single/01%20Valentine.m4a</string> I think that the old location was /Users/Home/Jason/Music/iTunes/ which was causing the scanner to choke. Actually you can look at the file attached to this bug report to see exactly what it looked like prior to my "fixing it". It would be good if the scanner would log the detail in a bit more error so that a user could pretty quickly figure out that a track and/or that track location was causing the scanner to die.
Created attachment 7533 [details] m4a from iTunes track. Here's the file as requested, but I don't think the file is what was causing the scanner to die, it was the file location, being in my local library, when all of the rest of the music was in /Volumes/Music/.