Category: Mac

Using your iTunes xml file with Linux PlexMediaServer

My home network setup consists of a Linux box (running Linux Mint), a “Hackintosh” (a hp compaq 6000 pro small form factor pc running macos sierra), a mac mini (macos sierra also hacked to install on a 2009 mac mini), and then a laptop running RHEL6.  I also have a 2 disk buffalo NAS and a 2 disk lenovo NAS with a 4 bay SATA enclosure with 2x2TB disks hanging off it.

My Linux server runs several different background services for my primary source of streaming video to my roku – these consist of sabnzbd+, sonarr, and plexmediaserver.  On my buffalo NAS I have almost 18000 mp3s which are mounted as /Volumes/Music and added to my itunes library on the mac mini. This same NAS share is mounted as /Music on the Linux Mint machine.

Here’s how I got them into the iTunes channel in plex.

  1. First you need to set the option in iTunes to share its library via an XML file.
  2. This will put a file called iTunes Music Library.xml in your “Music” folder.
  3. via cron or something, set up a process to copy this file over to the /Music share on the linux server and post process it to change the Location tag  – /Volumes/Music/Music needs to become just /Music/Music :
    # scp mini2:Music/iTunes*.xml /Music/itunes_temp.xml
    # cat /Music/itunes_temp.xml | sed ‘s%/Volumes%%’ > /Music/iTunes\ Music\ Library.xml
  4. In the server settings for Plex Media Server, there is option under Server -> Channels (click “Advanced”) and you can enable the iTunes channel.  Enter /Music/iTunes Music Library.xml in the box “
  5. Restart plexmediaserver :
    # sudo systemctl restart plexmediaserver.service

Enjoy your itunes music in plex.  Now just to figure out how to get Alexa to play it back 🙂

 

Open Sourcing my Hackintosh ;)

Running a HP SPP mini tower with Yosemite installed and finally getting tired of finder and iTerm. Don’t get me wrong, I like iTerm, but from my linux background, my fingers just know terminator so much better 🙂

I tried installing terminator via brew but it did not seem very stable – I opened up a 4-up terminator view and after the icon spun for 5 minutes, it crashed.

Fink seems to be much more stable and integrates its programs right into XQuartz where the brew installed version popup’d a separate python window.

1. install fink:  bash script to do it all for ya https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fink/scripts/master/srcinstaller/Install%20Fink.tool

2. fink install terminator

3. fink install nautilus

4. Setup dbus for OSX :

sudo launchctl load -w /sw/share/dbus/launchd/org.finkproject.dbus-session.plist

launchctl load -w /sw/share/dbus/launchd/org.finkproject.dbus-session.plist

 

Screen Shot 2016-03-20 at 8.17.54 PM

Mac OSX Leopard – Overriding DNS

As a web developer,I have to move sites around frequently. Sometimes this can be tricky accessing both websites before/after the move has occurred.

One case is trying to get to the “old site” after it has been moved.  This can be accomplished using a special file on a Mac (and all *nix based systems) named /etc/hosts.

Read the Rest…