Comments on: Setting up a Headless iTunes Server

By: Jon Kragh

Jon Kragh — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:28:25 +0000

@Brad Thaks for posting! Your tips really make for a clean setup!

Cheers,
Jon

By: Brad

Brad — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:51:15 +0000

@matt, @Jon… I have a similar setup with airtunes playing from my server downstairs. I did, however, figure out how to get itunes to share while still being able to be logged off. The error message that you get when launching itunes is because there is nothing plugged in to the sound card in the back. In order for this to work you must get that message to go away, so I just found a pair of cheesy earphones, plugged them into the back of the server and it doesn’t show the message anymore. Win server 2008 has some really cool task scheduling features. I went into server manager -> configuration -> task scheduler and made a new task that starts when windows starts and had it launch itunes.exe. There is a checkbox on whether to run the task if the user is logged in or not, check that box, uncheck the box that will shut the task down if it runs too long. Now whenever windows starts, itunes starts in the background whether or not anyone is logged in. And in itunes 9 you can set up home sharing, works nice

By: Jon Kragh

Jon Kragh — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:48:14 +0000

@Matt – iTunes I believe has to be launched in order for the built iTunes sharing feature to work. Another option is to put your library on a network share and use the same library file on every computer (each computer would have to have the same share mapped with the same drive letter). Then when launching iTunes, hold down the shift key and point to the library file on your share to use as your main library file. In the iTunes preferences you would also have to say I want to keep my files on Z: (where z is the drive letter of your mapped drive).

That is how I used to have my music in one physical location, with one library file, used by many PCs.

Also, I can see my win2k8 server using iTunes built in sharing from my macbook pro laptop in my current setup.

Cheers,
Jon

By: Jon Kragh

Jon Kragh — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:41:51 +0000

@jeff I’m only using streaming right now, but I point the main iTunes server to a network share. My library has z:\ for all the paths from an old setup where I had multiple machines pointing to the same library file and music on the network. If you hold shift while iTunes launches on a PC you can point it to another library file.

Cheers,
Jon

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:02:02 +0000

Thanks for the article, I am thinking about doing a similar setup using win 2k8 server and itunes 9. I have a question though, do you have to be logged in with iTunes running to get the sharing functionality? I’m trying to find a solution that does not require a user to login and turn on itunes.

Cheers!

By: jeff przylucki

jeff przylucki — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:56:05 +0000

fun article. Do you use this library as the iTunes library on your other machines? Or do you simply use the sharing? Or are you really only using this to stream to your audio rack? I’m trying to find the best way to centralize my iTunes music.. the streaming would be simple.. but I really want to simplify the import process…

Also, the file corruption bug in WHS has been fixed for over a year…

By: IRONHEAD

IRONHEAD — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:49:40 +0000

nice to setup i don’t have airport express card but i could still network them to share my music
so can you actually start up your server by just using apple remote