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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac Apps
Abstract: If you want to simultaneously share iTunes music from multiple accounts on the same Mac, you must open a port for each account in System Preferences: Sharing: Firewall.

One of the nice things about getting married is that I get to combine all of the geek toys that I have, with all of the geek toys that I gave my girlfriend/fiancé. (The look on her face when I gave her the Airport Express was tragically similar to Marge's when Homer gave her a bowling ball with his name on it for her birthday.) Our co-mingled household includes the following: PowerBook and iPod for me, WinTel notebook and iPod mini for her, three Airport Expresses, and my old Sawtooth G4. We wanted to consolidate our music on the Sawtooth to make backup and music management easier. In order that we could both have full control over our playlists, I placed the music on a shared drive on the Sawtooth, and then managed our iPods through separate accounts on that machine (the only side effect was that her iPod had to be reformatted). So far so good.

Then I had the bright idea that it would be cool if we could also be able to simultaneously access our playlists via Airtunes (each of the the Airport Expresses are connected to a different stereo -- Office, Living Room, Bed Room). On the Sawtooth, I logged into both accounts and clicked the "Share my music" checkbox under iTunes: Preferences: Sharing. I left both accounts active and running iTunes. On the laptops, I made sure that "Look for shared music" was checked under iTunes: Preferences: Sharing. Then I looked on my PowerBook and saw that under Shared Music in iTunes, there were entries for me and my girl. The problem was that I could only access one of the iTunes shares at a time.

Whenever I accessed one iTunes share, any attempt to access the other was met with an error message saying that share could not be accessed and that I should make sure that sharing was enabled and that the firewall was not blocking the traffic. I confirmed that both accounts on the Sawtooth had iTunes sharing activated and the firewall under System Preferences: Sharing: Firewall had a check in the "Allow" field next to "iTunes Music Sharing." I was stumped. Here's where reading comprehension, or just being observant, would have come in handy because iTunes was giving me a very helpful error message telling me that a specific port needed be opened.

After much trial and error, I finally noticed that the port that iTunes wanted opened was different than the default port under System Preferences: Sharing: Firewall. The solution: I went to System Preferences: Sharing: Firewall on the Sawtooth and then selected "New..." in the drop down, changed the Port Name to "Other," and then filled in the "TCP Port Number(s)" field with the port that iTunes was requesting and gave it a description, e.g., iTunes Music Sharing 2. The final result being that the Sawtooth now has two ports open for iTunes: the default, and additional port as given in the error message.

As I type this, I'm in the Living Room listening to one of my playlists and the spouse is in the bedroom listening to one of hers -- all of it being streamed from the same old Sawtooth G4 up in the loft.

FYI on simultaneous streams from the Sawtooth. I'm not sure how taxing this is on my music server, but I should point out that it has been upgraded lest someone try to use an old machine for this purpose and find it not up to the task. Specifically, the Sawtooth has one Gig of memory, an upgraded 800 Mhz G4 processor and an 802.11g PCI card that OS X recognizes as an Airport Extreme card (after much trial and error, but that's a story for another time).
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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: van2van2 on Dec 01, '05 07:38:41AM

Couple of questions.. Do you sync your iPods with the Sawtooth machine? Do you purchase music from the Music Store? If so, how do you manage that?
The bowling ball/airport express analogy is very funny!



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: bciesq on Dec 02, '05 05:18:23AM
Couple of questions.. Do you sync your iPods with the Sawtooth machine? Do you purchase music from the Music Store? If so, how do you manage that?
Both iPods are synced on the Sawtooth. I log in on my account to sync my iPod and we log in on wife-to-be's account to sync hers. We purchase quite a lot of music from ITMS and it isn't a problem even though we have separate accounts. Her account has three computers authorized (her WinTel laptop, my PowerBook and the Sawtooth) as does mine. We can purchase songs on any of the machines and transfer them to the others without a problem.

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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: sadam15 on Dec 08, '05 05:39:26AM

How do you get all the music shared on the Sawtooth? I assume you don't have duplicate copies of all the music. I'd like my wife to have her own music library with her own ratings, playcount etc, but am unsure how to have both Mac accounts access the same set of music files without having iTunes move them around.



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: mistersquid on Dec 01, '05 10:31:40AM

While effective, this seems to be an inelegant solution, one prone to break with a future update. It also presumes you won't ever want to add users (for whom new ports would be required).

Why not establish a new user (standard account) on the Sawtooth (name it "music" | "iTunes" | "shares" | "etc."), give the music to that user, and hand out passwords to whoever wants to access to the music on the Sawtooth?

Then, on whatever machine you are using, log in over AFP to the sawtooth as that user and mount that user's home directory. Set up your local version of iTunes so that its music directory is that user's iTunes music directory.

The beauty part of this scenario is that you can mount that user's directory not only on the LAN but also over the Internet, forget iTunes music sharing altogether. Take your laptop to your office or to a friend's house, get on the WAN and access your music files!



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: jctull on Dec 01, '05 02:34:05PM

This is a really good solution, but what if someone is using the sawtooth? You cannot login via AFP to the computer you are on, at least not in a test I just performed. Presumably, if the music is on an external drive, this would not matter because that volume is available to all logged in users. But then music added by different users may have permission issues. (Can music added to an iTunes library be read by all users? I do not think so, but not certain.)

If the music were on the internal drive, it would either need to be in a non-standard location outside of the "Music" user's home directory, within their "Public" directory, or would have to have special permissions.

I am not entirely sure if this would end up being all that elegant either, at least in the case where someone actually uses the machine that serves the music.



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: mistersquid on Dec 02, '05 04:52:57AM

If someone were using the sawtooth . . . Now *there's* a problem for you. Sort of. If the data and operating system are separate then it wouldn't be a problem. I was sticking as closely to bciesq's scenario as I could, but I do a version of this myself.

In particular, I have a main user (who is an administrator) that owns the iTunes files on an internal hard drive other than the startup volume (the drive in question is named "domokun"). My 2 other home computers and one work computer (WAN) all have domokun mounted using AFP and all have equal access to the audio library.

The playlists (and libraries should I ever want them to be so) on each machine can be as distinct as I choose them to be.

Other users can read the volume, so that's not a problem on the sawtooth. However, to add music one either has to have the appropriate group permissions or be logged in as the owner. I think having a user who is not an administrator (my setup is unique) for all to use is the best solution for most people.



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: bciesq on Dec 02, '05 05:40:44AM
While effective, this seems to be an inelegant solution, one prone to break with a future update. It also presumes you won't ever want to add users (for whom new ports would be required).

Why not establish a new user (standard account) on the Sawtooth (name it "music" | "iTunes" | "shares" | "etc."), give the music to that user, and hand out passwords to whoever wants to access to the music on the Sawtooth?

Then, on whatever machine you are using, log in over AFP to the sawtooth as that user and mount that user's home directory. Set up your local version of iTunes so that its music directory is that user's iTunes music directory.

The beauty part of this scenario is that you can mount that user's directory not only on the LAN but also over the Internet, forget iTunes music sharing altogether. Take your laptop to your office or to a friend's house, get on the WAN and access your music files!

I guess inelegance is in the eye of the beholder. In my situation, I needed a simple solution because my fiancee wouldn't want to go through the trouble of mounting a drive remotely. Also, I'm not sure why a future update would break this -- I know that Apple has restricted internet sharing of music, but I don't see them restricting the use of Airport Express in the way that I am using it. In any event, I don't have a use for internet sharing -- if I am away from the house I have my iPod with me because that's its purpose.

You are correct that new users will require new ports to be opened, but I don't see that being a common occurrence in my situation -- YMMV.

Finally, I don't know if your method would work with my fiancee's WinTel machine (I'm not saying it wouldn't, but I have concerns). Have you tried it with a Wintel box?

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Fiancée
Authored by: lavar78 on Dec 01, '05 06:22:54PM

You are her fiancé, but she is your fiancée.



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Fiancée
Authored by: bciesq on Dec 02, '05 06:30:59AM
You are her fiancé, but she is your fiancée.
touché

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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: g3ski on Feb 15, '07 10:13:53PM

Syncing libraries :(

Even if the permissions were not an issue, the other problem is that any music added by one mac will not be seen by other macs. Itunes will not automatically update the LIBRARY based on new files dragged into the music folder drive.

SCENARIO:
iMac, PB, and G3 all connect to a shared drive called "music" on a headless server. At first setup, all three macs would have the same music in their library. Each could manipulate their playlists as they choose. Each could also delete, edit, or add music.

If G3 deleted the song, "greatsong1", iMac and PB would see the song in their library, but would get the exclamation point when they try to play the song.

On the other hand if PB ripped 5 Beatles CDs (or imported them from another source), PB would see those songs in PBs library. All of the Beatles songs would exist in the shared music folder on the server's HD. But iMac and G3 would not see the songs in their Library. Both iMac and G3 would need to manually import those songs from the server to their library.

How to syncronize the library across multiple users?

The initial comment didn't seem to need that, but rather wanted to monitor his children and be able to backup the music.

---
"I want my two dollars!"



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: morespace54 on Apr 16, '07 11:14:54AM

exactly. I wanted to share a (music) mounted drive on my iMac, G4 and Wintel laptop. Same problem as above. Can't sync libraries. I guess each solution has it's drawback... :(



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Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac
Authored by: slarti42 on Apr 16, '07 02:17:22AM

I am looking for a way to share my library with 2 computers also. As it is now, I just copy the library file from one computer to the other after I make any changes, but that isn't a very good solution.



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