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Multible Computer Libraries
My library is on an external hard drive. I understand songbird stores its library locally. For itunes I use my same library at work and at home (the library on the external drive). Is this possible with Songbird? To take it one step further is this possible between Windows Vista and Linux (Kubuntu)? Specifically, I am wanting to keep track of ratings, playlists, and play counts.
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?It works the same way with all xul programs, that I've worked with (Firefox, Thunderbid and Songbird for example).
Do you know the Profile Manager?
In Windows, you can open it from the start menu.
There you can create as many profiles, as you see fit and put them, where you want.
Once created, you could do two things.
You could always let the Profile Manager start, before you run songbird. That way, before each start, you could choose which profile to use.
Another thing is to create a specified launcher.
You can add strings to a launcher, that tell it to open a specific Profile on startup.
For that, you have to edit the launcher/shortcut of your program. Just right click on it and hit preferences. There in the field, Target,
As seen in this picture, you need to add a little line.
You have to add
-P "NAMEofPROFILE"
to the end of the Target string, that points to the songbird exe.
By doing that, you tell songbird to launch with that specific Profile.
Beware: The profile Naming is case sensitive.
There is a comprehensive writeup of this at mozilla. If you need further instructions, just look that up. It has all the info you'll need about the profile manager, as for setting variables for it. Here's the link
Now to your specific request. Thought about it, and I think it will require quite some work to run smoothly... Here we go:
1.) Songbird has to be properly installed on all machines.
2.) You will have to run the profile manager once, on every machine, to create the link to the same profile, on your portable drive. The first time, you'll do this, will write the new folders. All other times, it will just create the links, so that you'll be able to use it. Problem is, that the profile path has to be linked in the profile manager, so that it can work.
3.) You set up a specific launcher, which you could rename "flying bird" and set those launchers to that exact profile.
Done.
I used a similar setup for quite some time, when I still used to check my mails via pop3 and Thunderbird. I wanted to cross-use the same mails and profile on a dual booting Linux and Windows machine.
Worked very nicely. (forgetting the problems ntfs caused me back then)
There is only one thing you have to remember. There are addons out there, that only work with specific OS'es. Like say only on Windows. Be sure, NOT to install those. I'm sure, that those could cause trouble.
Hope that helps and you can fiddle around with that.
Be sure to ask away, if anything is unclear.
Tyler out!
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this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks tylerstyle that was the direction I was leaning toward. I had actually copied my profile to the external drive already but was not having any luck with it yet (just tried it once). I am going to try a fresh new profile this time.
I’m amused
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This answers the question
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Be sure to tell us, if it worked and how well. -
Inappropriate?I am having trouble with the location of the files. My windows is on M: drive and several folders deep. Of course, Linux doesn't use M: drive I am at /media/Storage. So the files are not found by linux. This doesn't look like it has the possibility of working. Not unless the Songbird can store a relative path to the songs. I tried mounting at /M: but I run into problems with capitalization problems in the path. Songbird doesn't seem to be exact on how it stores the path between the two OS 's. I run into this over and over with whatever media player I try to use as well. I think the real answer is for Songbird to install to a standalone file and the music is relative to that install folder.2 Comments Add a comment
This answers the question
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That sure is a pain... Had no time to check it out myself these past days... Sorry. My flat was flooded and I have quite some work on my hands. As soon, as I find the time, I'll try to look into it and maybe figure something out.
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Let me clarify a bit, if I use the itunes library import the paths are imported as lowercase so I cannot reproduce this in Kubuntu without renaming my folders. It looks like if I do a scan of folders they may be imported with correct path. I might be able to get this to work.
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Inappropriate?I've had exactly the same question. I'm sharing both firefox bookmarks and thunderbird mailboxes between windows and linux on a dual boot machine. With songbird, this doesn't work because of the path problem that was mentioned. What we need is an addon that can rewrite the media paths on the fly, so we can tell the linux installation of songbird to replace "F:/Music/" with "/media/sda4/Music/" when looking for media files. Apart from that, one could just create links to all .db files, so the linux installation uses the databases on the windows partition.
Is there any development in that direction? Or in an even less complicated way?
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?joux, I think better than re-writing the path would be to make the path "Relative" to the installation of Songbird. I would love to completely install songbird to my WD passport (external hard drive) an play from there. But you are correct it would be nice to have something.
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Inappropriate?OK, relative paths may be a good idea if the library is on the same partition as songbird. But if they are on different partitions, the problem is the same. And not every user has the choice to put songbird onto their media drive, think of standard installation directories (from packet managers on linux or setup wizards on windows) or cases where you have multiple media sources, which are not always mounted.
My path rewrite idea is a pretty poor hack, of course. Think about this different idea:
Every media file is given a unique ID, which is saved in the file's metadata. The songbird library stores all its information (play count, rating) related to the ID instead of the path. Then there is a second database, which translates the media ID to a path.
This second db can be different for the two operating systems, so when running the windows version, the ID translates to a path on "F:" and on linux to "/media/sda2".
This way, we would never lose our ratings. Even if a file is moved elsewhere, songbird could just search in the known media directories for the missing file, identifying it by its ID.
This would make the path business much more robust. We could even do crazy things like copying parts of our music collection to our laptop's harddrive when going on holidays. All ratings would stay, even if we continue using the full library on the external drive after returning home - the IDs of the songs stay the same.
CHAMP
