So, I have a bunch of music stored on a hard-drive which I use and hook up to Apple Music. I received the Music from someone and it had all sorts of weird song names, for example I CANT IMAGINE (all caps) instead of "I Can't Imagine". So I went through and changed all the file names to be what I wanted (I changed them on the hard drive itself). I then deleted the library, and the library file (but not the music files themselves (with the now up to date names) and reimported the songs to Apple Music. But afterwards the original songs names are there, and when (and only when) I click on Get Info and look at where the file is located, it creates a new folder called Music (within my already existing folder called Music) which only has the song with the old title. It does this for each subsequent song I look at the Get Info for, it adds the old song with the old title to that new folder.
To clarify, it deletes the song with the title changed, and adds a version with the old file name to the new folder Music (all inside my drive). It is really becoming very frustrating. Any ideas as to how to fix this and effectively change the file names? (I have over 900 GB of music, most of it wasn't boughten from iTunes itself, so the best option has been to change the file names' case in bulk, which has worked well except for this phenomenon). I even restarted the computer and have, multiple times, deleted the music library file. I don't use the Media folder on my computer, but instead change it to point to my hard drive as there isn't enough space on my MacBook Air to keep it all on the computer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! (Sorry for the long entry, I wanted to ensure that all bases possible were covered)
Related
I am using FSEventsFramework to monitor directories for changes. I was wondering if my logic here is sound, for detecting old file name and new name after a rename.
I think on rename, both events are in the same callback.
Old file name will have event id X-1
New file name will have even id X
Is this true?
Thanks
As far as I experienced it, your assumption is not always true. On FSEventStreamCreate you will pass a latency as well as a flag for the meaning of the latency kFSEventStreamCreateFlagNoDefer. Therefore the events may or may not come in the same callback. Furthermore there are different ways the file can be renamed. Some Filesystem-APIs actually rename the file while keeping the inode like mv, others like NSDocument create a new inode. Sometimes you will receive kFSEventStreamEventFlagItemRenamed in the callback, sometimes not.
EDIT: Alternatives to FSEvents are Kernel Queues and NSFileCoordinator
FSEvents are somehow not fully documented in the API-Docs. Have a look at the header file FSEvent.h, there is more to read there.
Then to easily see what is going on for a rename, run your app and do some renaming with Finder, with terminal mv as well as in a document based app using the small triangle right to the filename.
Is there any simple way to do this?
I basically want iTunes to not open if an external hard drive is not connected. This is essentially a user issue - as despite asking multiple times, my girlfriend will forget and open an audio or video file without the external HDD connected (where the iTunes library is kept) and so the usual rigamarole occurs... the media file will then try and add itself to the iTunes library, which can't be found, so it'll default back to it's position on the internal hard disk, and then when I come to use it, it'll try and consolidate it for me (which is nice), except it then decides it needs to organise it - and this takes about 6 hours due to the amount of music I have on there.
I've tried changing the internal (default) iTunes music folder path to an alias to the external one, but that starts throwing out some beastly errors once you get into the loop (when the alias is essentially a pointer to an invalid location).
Is Automator something that could be used? Sorry I'm not very pro with OS X I'm afraid.
Thanks,
Duncan
It seems a straightforward way to do this is just to move the iTunes.app onto the external hard drive, and replace iTunes.app in the Applications folder with an alias pointing to iTunes on the external HDD (called iTunes).
As iTunes is system protected, you'll need to change the permissions of iTunes.app to move it, which you can do via gui or terminal (sudo chmod...)
Simples.
Imagine there are 3 or more independent locations where a file can be modified. These locations communicate to each other through email or mail (direct flash drive restoration). Though there is a big room for flow - to make simultaneous editing to the file and screw up things, this client won't change too much. He rather call everyone that he is working on the last update or tell the other guys that he is waiting for third guy's last update. Anyway, at some point after several exchanges, due to one of participants unintentional error THE LAST VERSION of the file eventually gets mixed up. From this point everyone searches for the last version BY LOOKING THE CONTENT of the file.
This client wants to have a central location (he has actually, that is his PC's some location) and let everybody (including himself) copy any new or suspected new file to this location but prevent file's last version being copied. From this location he has to easily copy, send or open the file and work.
So, here is my concept (2 steps):
step 1: I made an ad to the main application where this file is created or edited. This ad prompts the user to give a version number to the file with every invoked save command from the editing application. In fact the file can be re-saved multiple times but not considered modified (file attributes creation, save etc. do not have great meaning here). This said the user can cancel my ad-in but have saved the file, not saving a new file version.
step 2: multiple solutions:
solution A: I'm thinking to have a folder/file watch and prevent the last version of the file being overwritten. As you know, FileSystemWatcher will fire the change/delete etc., events AFTER FACT so, I have to back copy overwritten file after the fact (w/ some tricks).
solution B: have a database to store all version of files and built-in some shell extension to extract/view files from the database. Move all copied/pasted files to the database (my program folder) and restore latest file in working folder after watcher fires change/delete event.
solution 3: find out built-in windows tools (API etc.) to greatly rely on it with some programming.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
I'm trying to use FSEvents to detect when files were added/removed from a specific folder. For the moment, I implemented a simple wrapper around FSEvents, and it works fine : I get all the events.
BUT the problem I have now is that when I rename a file in the Finder, I catch 2 distinct events : the first one of type "renamed" with the old file name, and another one with "renamed" and the new filename. The event ids are different between both calls.
So, how am I supposed to know which "renamed" event contains the old name, and which event contains the old one ?? I tried looking in the documentation, but unfortunately, kFSEventStreamEventFlagItemRenamed is not documented ... it seems new in Lion.
PS: the only way I could think of was : on a renamed event, I check my UI to see if I have an item corresponding to the event path. If so, I flag it for renaming. If not, I check if an item was flagged for renaming, and if so, then I rename it to the new event path. But I really don't like this idea ...
Edit: Ok, I imlemented something along the line of my "PS" : I noticed that when renaming something, the ids of the 2 events are consecutives, so that with the id of the event containing the new name, I can get the event containing the old name. I simply use a little dictionnary in my interface to store ids and associated paths in the case of a "renamed" event.
Anyway, I can now catch rename events, and even move events : when you move a file, it's a "renamed" event which is caught by the FSEventStream ...
But, I still have one last problem : deleting. When I delete something, it's moved to the recycle bin : I receive a "renamed" event. But the problem is that I don't receive the second rename event. Only a "modified" event on the .DS_Store file. I think this file is used by the Finder to know which files are in the bin, etc. So I could check modification to this file, and get the last "renamed" event to detect that a file was sent to the bin. But I'm using TotalFinder which uses Asepsis, which modifies the way the Finder stores .DS_Store files : I no longer receive "modified" on this.
To sumarize : I can't detect when a file is sent to the bin ...
Any idea how I can do that ? Maybe use something else than FSEvents to catch only this event ?
Well, I didn't find the perfect answer to my question, but I found a solution which I eventually was really satisfied with, so I thought I might share ^^
As I said, when moving stuff to the trash, if you're only watching 1 folder, you won't catch the event generated when the image is put in the trash. So, I decided to do the following :
I have a class which creates a stream on the root folder ("/") so that it will catch all the events -> this solves the problem of files being sent to the trash, and all such stuff. Then, this class allow to register delegates on certain pathes. So, instead of creating many streams, I create one big stream, then filter events as needed, and I create many delegates.
So all I have to do now when I want to watch events on a special folder is the following :
[[FSEventsListener instance] addListener:self forPath:somePath];
I just have to create an instance of FSEventListener at application start, and release it when the app stops.
And I just need to implement the following 3 methods which will be automatically called :
-(void)fileWasAdded:(NSString *)file;
-(void)fileWasRemoved:(NSString *)file;
-(void)fileWasRenamed:(NSString *)oldFile to:(NSString *)newFile;
If you're interested in the source code of this little utility, you can check here : http://blog.pcitron.fr/tools/macosx-imageviewer/ (the utility was added at the version 0.8)
I developed it as part of a a little image viewer to keep the UI synchronized with the disk content (it displays the number of images contained in each directories, etc.) The source code is available, and the utility is in Utils/FSEventsListener.h/.m.
And if by any chance someone actually downloads the application and take a look at the sources, if you find anything usefull (performance / feature improvement, whatever) feel free to drop a comment / mail ^^
You are actually raising two issues related to FSEvents and renames.
1. A file is renamed and both the old and new file names are within the directory trees being monitored.
2. A file is renamed and one of the names is not in the directory trees being monitored.
You have solved (almost) the first issue. It is also necessary to provide your application with a means of knowing which events are being reported in the same FSEvent group of events. Your method of knowing that two renames are reported consecutively only works if they are within the same group of events being reported within the same latency period. If two rename events of type 2 occur one after another but are not within the same group of events being reported in the same latency group, they actually have nothing to do with each other - and you will mistakenly think one file has be renamed to another.
It is possible to handle the second type of rename by simply monitoring every directory in the system using the root, but this will flood you with many unnecessary events. You can determine if a "partial" rename is the result of a file being moved out of the directory tree being monitored or into the directory tree being monitored by doing a stat() on the file. If stat() fails with an errno of 2, then the file has been moved outside the directory being monitored, and it can be treated as if it has been deleted. If stat() succeeds, the event can be treated as if the file has been created.
On my site a user may upload a file (pic, zip, audio, video, whatever). He then may decide to replace it with a newer revision. This user may upload a file, make a post then decide to put up a new revision replacing the old (lets say its a large zip or tar.gz file). Theres a good chance people may be downloading it if he sent out an email or even im for the home user.
Problem. I need to replace the file and people may be downloading and it may be some minutes before it is deleted. I dont want my code to stall until i cant delete or check every second to see if its unused (especially bad if another user can start and he takes long creating a cycle).
How do i delete the file while users are downloading the file? i dont care if they stop i just care that the file can be replaced and new downloads are the new revision.
What about referencing the files indirectly?
A mapping script, maps a virtual file entry from your site to a real file . If the user wants to upload a new revision of his file you just update the mapping, not the real file.
You can install a daily task that scans all files and deletes all files without a mapping and without open connections.
lajuette's answer is right, the easiest solution is to work around the file locking altogether:
When a user uploads file foo.zip, internally store it as foo-v1.zip.
Create a mapping file somewhere (database, code, whatever) that maps foo.zip to foo-v1.zip.
Rather than exposing a direct link to the file, expose a link to a service that gets the file: mysite.com/Download?foo.zip or something. This service uses the mapping to determine which version of the file to send to the client.
When a new version is uploaded, create foo-v2.zip and update the mapping file.
It wouldn't be that hard to write a scheduled task that cleans up old, un-mapped files.
If your oppose to a database and If the filenames are in a fix format (such as user/id.ext) you could append the id with a revision number and enumerate the folder using a pattern (user/id-*) and use the latest revision.