Mac problems

[themicksa]

A couple of weeks back I bought myself a shiny new Touch but am having a devil of a job getting it play ball with my Mac. I've also had no luck getting any response to my support requests, so I'm throwing myself upon the mercy and good grace of you forum users.

The basics:
I'm running an Intel iMac running OS 10.5.8
Squeezebox Server7.5.1 / r30836 is installed and running
The Touch box is connected to my airport and seems happy

All I really want to do is play my iTunes library through my hifi downstairs and also to connect to Internet radio stations. However, if as advised I simply check the use iTunes box and leave the music and playlist addresses blank, the scan terminates afer a few seconds with nothing to show in My Music on the Touch. If however I point to the music folder (which is in the standard itunes/iTunes Music location) but leave the iTunes box unchecked, most if not all of my library (15,000 or so mp3 and m4a tracks) show up in My Music but stacked within whatever folders they are in. Naturally (and not unreasonably I think) I would much prefer to navigate via artist, album etc. as in itunes. Playlists do not register at all.

My other problem is that although Internet Radio shows up as an option in Touch after a restart, as soon as I point the box at my music folder it vanishes from the menu. When it's visible it works.

Another weirdness is that although I can log in to mysqueezebox.com via the web site, the system prefs plugin resolutely refuses to recognise my login details. I have no idea whether this has any bearing on the other problems--I suspect not.

I've tried searching the forums here and though there are echoes, none of the replies I've found quite addresses my issues. I have done a major overhaul of my music collection, rooted out some rubbish and fixed some bad ID tags, tried several clean reinstalls and cleared caches. I've checked that ports are open etc. Can it be that Touch and iTunes are just not that friendly?

I'm not sure what else to tell you--I kind of hope I'm missing something really obvious, that someone can put me right, that I can feel duly embarrassed, and then get on with listening to the music.

So grateful for whatever light anyone can shed.

[Mnyb]

My other problem is that although Internet Radio shows up as an option in Touch after a restart, as soon as I point the box at my music folder it vanishes from the menu. When it's visible it works.

Another weirdness is that although I can log in to mysqueezebox.com via the web site, the system prefs plugin resolutely refuses to recognise my login details. I have no idea whether this has any bearing on the other problems--I suspect not.



.

These two just migth go together when you restart the Touch you seems to be conected directly to mysqueesebox.com but by choosing your music folder the Touch conects to your local squeezeboxserver on the mac, but as you said you can not enter your mysqueezebox.com credentials ? so your local server will have very limited internetradio options. Just a theory .
As squeezeboxserver uses mysqueezebox.com in the background for some things.

Seems like your sbs on your mac won't talk to the internet ?

My mac experience is limited no clue on that one or the airport, hope you have the mac and the touch on the same network so that not one of them are on the guest network that an airport's seems to have .

Hopefully suport will answer you and give you some help as they probably are best at this.

What does the Touch say in settings>advanced>diagnostics I supose support already told you to Chechen it out ?

[toby10]

Does the Mac version of SBS utilize the SBS Control Panel?
If yes, what is reported in Diagnostics for all ports, pings, IP's?

[epoch1970]

Preferences that refuse to stick or vanishing folders (in Finder ?) makes me think of wrong authorizations on files on the mac.
You could start Disk Utility on the mac, select your hard drive in the left window pane, then click a button called "repair authorizations" or something to the same effect.
(it is a long process, the "check authorizations" button is just a waste of time)
Repair will likely spew a lot of messages, but in my experience it does wonders. Reboot once you've done the repairs, just to make sure all files/processes are using the new rights.

You can do that from times to times, esp. before (and possibly after) a system update.

[themicksa]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I will try all those ideas. I've also made contact with Logitech Support and they are poring over the various logs. I'll let you know whatever progress we make.
best

[themicksa]

Still awaiting some input from the Logitech team but just updating on my struggle and your suggestions.

epoch1970--re. authorizations: I have repaired permissions several times to no noticeable effect

toby10 asked:
Does the Mac version of SBS utilize the SBS Control Panel?
If yes, what is reported in Diagnostics for all ports, pings, IP's?

The SBS control panel is in System Prefs but does not appear to have a Diagnostics option itself.However, the Diagnostics screen on the Touch shows: Necessary Ports, pings are OK.
The IP Gateway given is my router's address as is the DNS address.
The address listed for mysqueezebox.com is 66.150.114.115

Mnyb--your suggestion that the SBS can't connect seems likeliest but difficult to know what I'm missing on the Internet Radio front as I can't connect to mysqueezebox to configure.

To clarify, I can play my music by navigating on the Touchbox to My Music>Music Folder (the quality is great btw). That's OK as long as the folders are named something helpful. It also means that navigating by album etc. or using the search function are no good. What I can't do is get the SBS to scan, either in iTunes mode or not, without falling over after a few songs. Curious to know if the received opinion is that itunes and/or macs and SBS are notoriously flaky together or whether it's just my set-up.
cheers.
Mick

[kmr]

I've been running an SB3 (SlimDevices branded) and two Radios off of SBS on a Mac (2007 Intel iMac, OSX 10.6.4 currently) with no issues; however, I haven't had iTunes integration enabled for about a year or so (since switching over to one set of FLAC files for SBS and another set of AAC files for iTunes/iPods). But I did use iTunes integration prior to that with no problems. Are there multiple accounts on your Mac, and where do you have your iTunes library at?

[themicksa]

Thanks KMR,
I do have multiple accounts and the main music library is within my User (admin) account. Would it be better in the root directory or somesuch? I figured the location might be an issue 'cos it will only play when my account is active, though didn't think it would interfere with the scan process if I'm logged in there. Whether it fixes the main problem or not, what's the best location for the iTunes music folder so it's always available?
thx

[copperstate]

Are SBS and your iTunes Music collection using the same account? What does the server.log show (the SBS Squeezebox logs may be displayed in the "Console" application)?

Btw I have a Radio and a SB3 running just fine using an Intel MacMini.

[kmr]

I have my iTunes library in a shared location (/usr/shared) so that it can be shared among multiple users on my Mac; not sure if this contributed to success with SBS and iTunes integration or not - I suspect not. Best bet is to configure SBS to a high log level and look at the logs to see what's going on.

[themicksa]

Two steps forward, one step back:

I tinkered around with the router and turned on MAC filtering (not something I've ever had occasion to use) and entered the address of the Touch box and hey presto both the box and the SBS can now login to mysqueezebox. Not sure I fully understand the implications of what I just did as now I keep having to reconnect the various Macs around the house to the router as the Internet connection doesn't seem to stick.

Anyway, progress is not to be sneezed at and I was pleased to see that the directory scan process made a little more progress ... but not a lot. The iTunes option still falls over within in seconds while using the Directory Scan (just pointed at the iTunes Music folder) get most of the way through the A's (I guess it just scans the folders alphabetically, right?) before terminating. Figuring that the files may be somehow be corrupted I started removing them from the Music folder and rescanning. Each time I get a little further but it defies belief that so many of these files could be corrupt. That said the one thing they possibly share is that the folder or subfolder titles do seem to be either quite long or to contain characters like three periods, exclamation marks, underscores and so on. Does anyone know if that could be the problem? Are there certain conventions that need to be adhered to in order for Squeezebox to be comfortable with them?

btw, still waiting for Logitech to get in touch as promised. Are they usually this poor on support?

[copperstate]

...
btw, still waiting for Logitech to get in touch as promised. Are they usually this poor on support?

My experience with their support has always been very positive. :)

[Phil Leigh]

Two steps forward, one step back:

I tinkered around with the router and turned on MAC filtering (not something I've ever had occasion to use) and entered the address of the Touch box and hey presto both the box and the SBS can now login to mysqueezebox. Not sure I fully understand the implications of what I just did as now I keep having to reconnect the various Macs around the house to the router as the Internet connection doesn't seem to stick.

Anyway, progress is not to be sneezed at and I was pleased to see that the directory scan process made a little more progress ... but not a lot. The iTunes option still falls over within in seconds while using the Directory Scan (just pointed at the iTunes Music folder) get most of the way through the A's (I guess it just scans the folders alphabetically, right?) before terminating. Figuring that the files may be somehow be corrupted I started removing them from the Music folder and rescanning. Each time I get a little further but it defies belief that so many of these files could be corrupt. That said the one thing they possibly share is that the folder or subfolder titles do seem to be either quite long or to contain characters like three periods, exclamation marks, underscores and so on. Does anyone know if that could be the problem? Are there certain conventions that need to be adhered to in order for Squeezebox to be comfortable with them?

btw, still waiting for Logitech to get in touch as promised. Are they usually this poor on support?

I suggest you turn off iTunes integration. You don't need it right now (or possibly ever unless you use iTunes playlists).
If your folder names do have exclamation marks in them, this sort of thing can cause a problem...


If the scanner is failing, the reason why will be written to scanner.log.

If you can find that file on your Mac, see if there are any "errors"

[copperstate]

I suggest you turn off iTunes integration. You don't need it right now (or possibly ever unless you use iTunes playlists).
If your folder names do have exclamation marks in them, this sort of thing can cause a problem...


If the scanner is failing, the reason why will be written to scanner.log.

If you can find that file on your Mac, see if there are any "errors"

Actually all he has to do is open the Squeezebox panel in the System Preferences and select "Scanner Log" from the "Advanced" Tab (or use Apple's "Console" utility - which I prefer). Logitech can't make it any easier to access the server logs imho.

[themicksa]

Maybe it was more by luck than judgement but happy to report that my Touch is now in business: to recap, the squeezebox problem appears to have been a DNS issue that was resolved by turning on MAC filtering on on my router (D-Link dir-615) and putting the MAC address of the Touch to allow it access. That's not something I've ever had to do an Mac but I can't argue with results.

Next, for other reasons, I decided to upgrade my OS from 10.5 to 10.6. That may be irrelevant, because when I next tried the SBS it behaved exactly the same way crashing after a minute or two. I embarked on a search and destroy mission for badly tagged or otherwise dodgy-looking files. I didn't get far with that when last night, with no great hope invested, I upgraded the SBS software to 7.5.2. 15 minutes later the entire 15,000 contents of my music folder had been scanned without error. (Was 7.5.2 designed to fix any mac or scanning issues does anyone know?)

Uncannily, just as the SBS leapt into life, I received an email from Logitech seeking further info, which all being well, will no longer be needed. I still think that's a pretty laggardly level of customer support response, but at least I can feel smug for having got there in the end by myself--and of course with the generous advice from this forum. I dare say I shall be back with more dumb questions—still having problems with playlists or iTunes for example—but your help is much appreciated.