read dont write

March 24, 2007 9:50 AM

How do I keep patrons from editing the itunes library while still letting them download?

I'm creating a podcast station for my library which is basically just a computer where people will plug in their ipods/mp3 players to download free audiobooks, book reviews, podcasts etc. I need a way to keep people from editing the itunes library or adding stuff from their players onto itunes (im thinking of mischievous teenagers). I thought maybe I could set the harddrive as read only but itunes will need to download new podcast programs every day so that wouldnt work. Is there any easy way to restrict access in this way? Any help would be greatly appreciated

posted by petsounds to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Doesn't sharing your library only leave it as read only?
posted by Napierzaza at 10:06 AM on March 24, 2007

I don't have a lot of experience with iTunes, so this may not work, but iTunes splits its music folder into several subfolders, including one for podcasts. You could try setting the main iTunes Music folder to read-only (as well as the other subfolders in iTunes Music) and leave the Podcasts subfolder writable.

Note that this wouldn't prevent people from adding new podcast subscriptions. It may also make iTunes confused (that's what happens sometimes when you try the dumb brute-force solution).
posted by chrominance at 10:17 AM on March 24, 2007

Can you make the library a symlink to the library on another computer that has been mounted as a network share?
posted by Loto at 10:18 AM on March 24, 2007

if this is a macintosh running osx, you can change the owner of all the files to an account different than that which you log in as, and then give only read permissions to the account you're logging in as. setting the files as read only is fine, but if they're owned by the account that you're logged in as, people can just change the permissions. changing the owner prevents this.
posted by rhizome at 10:25 AM on March 24, 2007

To me, this sounds like a perfectly legitimate and legal use of OurTunes.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:02 AM on March 24, 2007