Samba Sharing from Ubuntu to Itunes

Ok, so I've gotten my music library onto Ubuntu and am sharing it via Samba. Now I want to remove the MP3 files from my Windows laptop and instead get at them via Samba.

My goal here is to be able to continue using Itunes on my Windows laptop to download podcasts and Itunes store purchases (i.e. the dynamic stuff) while keeping the bulk of the static MP3s on the server. And then sync my iPod from the laptop using a combination of the local and remote content. New CD's will be added by ripping them on the Ubuntu server and then being imported on the laptop (I think they will have to be manually added to the iTunes library on each laptop unfortunately).

First, I mount the Samba voume on my windows box. Then I fire up Itunes and delete all the music I copied over to Ubuntu, moving it to the recycle bin in the process. Yes, this takes a little while. (BTW, for reference I have about 8000 MP3s consuming about 40 GB and am using fairly modern machines.)

Now, I make sure that I don't copy the files from Samba to the local disk. I select Edit/Preferences and then select the Advanced tab and make sure "Copy files to iTunes folder when adding to library" is NOT selected. Then click OK.

Now I select File/Add Folder to Library. Then I find the mounted SAMBA folder and select the Music folder and hit OK.

Now go get lunch while it runs. It took roughly 30 minutes to import (after which you can start playing back music) and then another few hours to Process Album Artwork and Determine Gapless Playback Information (during which time iTunes is very sluggish but functional).

Following this I plugged in my iPod and synched. It took a while for the sync to start, I'm assuming iTunes took a while to confirm everything on the iPod matched the "new" MP3s in the iTunes library.

The one weird things I saw during synch, was that my single purchased song off of iTunes became duplicated in my library with the duplicate pointing to a missing file. I deleted this broken duplicate and all seemed well. *Shrug*