LMS on MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"?

[Evan_E]

> Any update on this? I recently upgraded to Catalina and started having
> the same problems. After giving FULL DISC ACCESS to everything
> mentioned in this thread, I STILL can't run the latest nightly build and

Does it not run, or does it not have access to your discs?

--

Michael

[Evan_E]

LMS on MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"?

I've searched the forum for terms like "iTunes", "MacOS", and "Catalina", but can't seem to find anything about this - as of the forthcoming release of MacOS 10.15 "Catalina", Apple's going to be dispensing with iTunes, replacing it with a "Music" app modeled after the one in iOS.

Has anyone been trying this out in the beta of Catalina? Does it mess with the way LMS has been interacting with iTunes for years (scanning files organized by iTunes, and reading iTunes playlists)? I've been using iTunes as a way to rip and organize my library of music for a decade or so, then using LMS to serve it to various Squeezebox devices around the house, and if that's all going to break with OS 10.15 I may have to think long and hard about having a separate iTunes & LMS server. Or I might finally bite the bullet and switch to a Sonos system, but that's major chunk of change, esp. given the number of Squeezeboxen I have.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can share their experiences.

[mherger]

LMS on MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"?

> Has anyone been trying this out in the beta of Catalina? Does it mess
> with the way LMS has been interacting with iTunes for years (scanning

Yes. iTunes import is dead. macOS no longer provides the XML file we've
been parsing for years. From the discussions I've read this is gone for
good, and was supposed to be deprecated for years.

--

Michael

[Paul Webster]

Just seen an article that says that manual export of playlists to XML will be possible ... but there is SDK access to the info which works with iTunes and will work with "Music".

https://djtechtools.com/2019/09/15/will-the-end-of-itunes-break-dj-software-in-macos-10-15-catalina/

[mherger]

LMS on MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"?

> Just seen an article that says that manual export of playlists to XML
> will be possible ... but there is SDK access to the info which works
> with iTunes and will work with "Music".

Pull requests will be very welcome :-)
--

Michael

[Paul Webster]

Looks like the SDK is MacOS only and requires code signing.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ituneslibrary?language=objc

[Paul Webster]

Maybe the way to do it would be for someone (with a Mac) to produce an application that creates an XML file that looks like the one that iTunes currently creates.
Assuming that quite a few applications (not just LMS) are still using the iTunes XML file mechanism then I could imagine that someone will build such a thing (i.e. not necessarily someone with LMS).

An example of a demo app that uses the framework

https://github.com/zadr/iTunesLibraryExample

[sgmlaw]

Not to hijack the thread, but what is the projected compatibility of MPlayer with LMS under Catalina?

MPlayer has been a nice bridge app to allow seamless LMS playback of WMA files.

Up to now, I have only found the earlier 32-bit versions of MPlayer to work with LMS on my OSX systems.

Newer MPlayer OSX Extended (64-bit) versions don't seem to work with LMS 7.9.x, at least not for me.

And Catalina will only run 64-bit apps.

[dborod]

Can anyone confirm if SqueezePlay still works on Catalina? Activity Monitor reports that it's a 64-bit app, but that no guarantee.

[sgmlaw]

Can anyone confirm if SqueezePlay still works on Catalina? Activity Monitor reports that it's a 64-bit app, but that no guarantee.

I can confirm that SqueezePlay version 1034 or higher should work with Catalina.

If you have a fully updated version of Mojave, you will get a preemptive warning prompt if the application is going to have a problem with Catalina.

I think the latest Mac version of SqueezePlay is r1188. Ralph Irving, the current developer, may have further information.

Versions can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/lms...s/squeezeplay/

[sgmlaw]

Having just upgraded to Catalina today, I can absolutely confirm that SqueezePlay runs under it.

HOWEVER, if it is not already on these lists, perl must be added to the list of "Full Disc Access" applications in Security & Privacy settings under System Preferences in Catalina.

Otherwise, LMS cannot access your local Media Library folders.

Once added, perl will also be automatically added to the list of apps allowed to access files and folders under the "Files and Folders" listing in that same Security & Privacy pane.

I have been unable to add perl only to the File and Folder access pane, so it must be given Full Disc Access at this time. This appears to be a current limitation of Catalina.

[sgmlaw]

Confirmed that MPlayer -- and the PlayWMA plugin -- no longer work under Catalina.

MPlayer OSX Extended does work in Catalina. But LMS does not recognize this version, and the PlayWMA plugin does not operate.

A fix to recognize 64-bit versions of MPlayer in future LMS Betas would be most welcome.

[mherger]

LMS on MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"?

> HOWEVER, if it is not already on these lists, perl must be added to the
> list of "Full Disc Access" applications in Security & Privacy settings
> under System Preferences in Catalina.

Hmm... did macOS ask you to do so?

I'm wondering whether my using pre-release versions from the very early
days would show slightly different behaviour. I can't remember this.

Next year we'll likely face bigger issues: there are rumours that the
next version of macOS will no longer come with Perl installed :-(.

--

Michael

[sgmlaw]

> HOWEVER, if it is not already on these lists, perl must be added to the
> list of "Full Disc Access" applications in Security & Privacy settings
> under System Preferences in Catalina.

Hmm... did macOS ask you to do so?

I'm wondering whether my using pre-release versions from the very early
days would show slightly different behaviour. I can't remember this.

Next year we'll likely face bigger issues: there are rumours that the
next version of macOS will no longer come with Perl installed :-(.

--

Michael

No. What actually happened is that LMS could no longer access any folders on the host system as media library targets. The system gave no prompts. The media library just ‘disappeared’ in LMS, as “empty”.

In my LMS implementation, all media and user data except those forced to the OS drive to run the apps, are kept on an external TB stack. Including all audio files.

Catalina now finally does that in a virtual sense via further hidden partitioning of the boot volume into a “Data” drive, where OS user data is kept. Under Catalina, the core OS now operates in its own separate read-only volume. A protected play pen of sorts. What I had been indirectly trying to do for over 20 years.

In the past, the OS has left my external data drive mainly unmolested, so there was never a library issue before. But Catalina implements a more aggressive file access protection/permissions protocol than Mojave. It now more aggressively limits access to external and removable drives. I recalled encountering similar issues with 3rd party backup apps in Mojave, as they also access the OS volume. The workaround is to give the apps full disk access permissions. Once I was able to get perl listed with those same permissions, LMS was able to access its external library targets again.

Catalina is still a little buggy. It took a couple reboots for the permissions to finally stick as an automatic setting.

There are some other bugs, such as MPlayer incompatibility, and the chromecast bridge plugin needs to be manually restarted once LMS is fully started. Then it runs fine. I presume it is a similar delayed permissions hang.

If Apple drops perl, that will certainly make life harder.

[roundjr]

I will keep running LMS on Mojave for now, I just moved it there from High Sierra. But I've been poking around the new Music app in Catalina a bit today to check that a few scripts I use for some tag related stuff still work. Short version, they do: Apple Scripts in ~/Library/Music/Scripts can be run in Music in Catalina more or less like they did from ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts before.

The script below is not meant as a solution to the missing .xml file. It is ugly, not very tested, sends keypresses to the Music application, and it will probably break unless used carefully. But it will attempt to tell the Music app to do a File - Library - Export Library... and put it in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml which is probably where LMS expects to find it. So it is not production ready, but it appears to work on my test installation. So I figured someone else might want to look at half automating the export of the xml file for LMS, or other applications using the legacy xml format.

You can open the script in Script Editor and export it as an Application to run it by double clicking on it. You will have to grant it access in Security Preferences of Catalina. With minor modifications it should be able to export specific playlists to xml. And you can of course do the same manually from the Music app on Catalina, which is safer. I am probably not going to use this for LMS myself.

tell application "Music"
	activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
	tell application process "Music"
		tell menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
			click menu item "Export Library…" of menu 1 of menu item "Library"
		end tell
		repeat until exists window "Save"
			delay 0.1
		end repeat
		
		set musicfolderpath to get path to music folder
		set libraryxmlpath to POSIX path of musicfolderpath
		
		tell window "Save"
			keystroke "g" using {command down, shift down}
			repeat until exists sheet 1
				delay 0.1
			end repeat
			
			tell sheet 1
				keystroke libraryxmlpath
				keystroke "/iTunes"
				click button "Go"
			end tell
			tell window "Save"
				keystroke "iTunes Music Library.xml"
			end tell
			click button "Save"
			if sheet 1 exists then
				click button "Replace" of sheet 1
			end if
		end tell
	end tell
end tell