Two Part: Networked shared library, slow iPod mini sync

[Releaux]

Hi everyone,

Part of this question may be more appropriate for the networking forum, but I thought I'd post here first.

I have my iTunes library on my primary computer in my home office. It's stored on a separate 120g ATA hard drive, and works fine.

My wife has an iMac in her home office and just got an iPod mini. I want her to be able to maintain her own "library" (playlists, ratings, etc.) while accessing the hard drive in my office Mac as a read-only user. This method also allows her to burn her own custom CDs and keep her iPod on her computer.

PROBLEM 1: Mounting the library drive
I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the library hard drive to appear as a mountable volume on her iMac without mounting it using my account (which gives her read/write). I've tried the following:


Created a user account for her on my Mac.
Added both of our accounts to the "staff" group using NetInfo Manager.
Set the library hard drive's group to "staff" and group permissions to "read-only." (My account is the HD's owner)


When I attempt to mount the volume on her iMac using her account, the library hard drive doesn't show up - just public folders and her home directory on my machine.

For the time being, I simply mounted the drive using my account and turned off the organization preferences in her copy of iTunes. This has worked fine for creating playlists, burning CDs, etc. But...

PROBLEM 2: Incredibly slow iPod sync
This morning when we tried to sync her iPod for the first time, the song copy was extraordinarly slow. Like slower than realtime... a single song takes around 3-6 minutes to copy over. I made sure that her iPod software was up-to-date, tried both firewire ports, etc., etc., etc.

I'm guessing that there's some funky interaction with the library since it's a network share, but this is the first time I've tried a sync with a network library, so perhaps I'm doing something wrong. I find it odd, however, that a CD burn has no problem, but syncing to the iPod is so slow.

Any ideas?

[yellow]

Which iMac?

[Releaux]

Which iMac?

It's a 700MHz G4 flat-panel (white hemisphere base). The OS is 10.3.5 with all but the most recent security update (just haven't gotten around to that one yet). The iTunes version is 4.6.

[yellow]

Problem 1 should be solvable using SharePoints (http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/).

As for Problem 2, what kind of home network is this? How fast?

[Releaux]

Problem 1 should be solvable using SharePoints (http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/).

As for Problem 2, what kind of home network is this? How fast?

I actually solved the speed problem. (It's a 100mb switched network, btw). This was one of those coincidental failures that probably wouldn't have been noticed if I weren't dealing with big files.

The ethernet cable failed, so the iMac went to the Airport card instead. Fast enough for me not to notice browser speed difference...

So, the replacement cable is working fine and syncing is progressing at a much faster rate. Still slower than local, but definitely acceptable.

Regarding the network problem, SharePoints looks like it will work, but shouldn't this be possible without using a 3rd party program?

Thanks for all the help!

[yellow]

I imagine your "staff" group would have to have read rights on every directory on it's way down to your Music library in order for it to function the way you want it.

[trevor]

Regarding the network problem, SharePoints looks like it will work, but shouldn't this be possible without using a 3rd party program?

Of course it's possible, but SharePoints makes it a lot easier. If you want to do it without using a third party program, enough information to get you started can be found at this tip (http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=10437).

Trevor

[Releaux]

Thanks for the help, yellow and trevor.

Yellow, I believe that the staff group permissions are copied to all enclosed items, but even if they weren't, that shouldn't prevent the volume from being visible in the mount dialog if the volume itself is readable.

Trevor, in all likelihood, I'll use SharePoints, but when it comes to stuff mucking about in the system, I like to at least know how to do it manually before I start using an automated tool. I just feel more comfortable that way. Thanks for the link!

[yellow]

What I mean is, if the Music library is in ~you/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/, and "iTunes Music" is owned & readable by staff, but your home directory is owned by admin and is NOT readable by "others", then it doesn't matter what the permissions are on "iTunes Music". "Others" (which is anyone group that is not admin, assuming admin owns the rest of your directory permissions on the way up from "iTunes Music") will be blocked out. This applies to any directory permission in between.

[Releaux]

I see what you're saying. But all of those directories are on a drive by themselves and there is simply an alias in my home directory pointing to the root of the drive.

In other words, the "iTunes" directory is on the root of this hard drive, and that hard drive is available in the /Volumes directory and is group-readable. I just need to figure out how to create a mount point for /Volumes/musicdrive/iTunes/iTunes Music.

As I said above, I'll probably end up using the utility, but I wanted to find out how to do it manually first.

Thanks for the help!