[SOLVED] Change default Music folder Path

[gary.zw]

I changed the location in user-dirs.dirs to XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/media/500 GB Drive/Music" that does not work so I tried XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/media/500 GB Drive/Music" that does not work either. So how can I get the Music folder in my Home folder to link to the Music folder on my other drive?

[xenopeek]

What I usually do is remove the Music folder in my home directory, and create a symbolic link (a shortcut in Windows terms) to the location on my second hard disk. To do so, just delete the Music folder in your home directory (assuming it's empty) and then from the terminal run:

Code: Select all

ln -s "/media/500 GB Drive/Music" ~/Music

Note that I'm assuming your 500 GB Drive with the music files on it is a removable drive? If it is not a removable drive, you may want to add it to /etc/fstab so it is automatically mounted each time you boot.

[lurkatron]

hi
i have changed mine to XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/media/data/Music" and that works
so hmmm, could it be the spaces in '500 GB Drive' i wonder?

no idea really, just guessing

[xenopeek]

hi
i have changed mine to XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/media/data/Music" and that works
so hmmm, could it be the spaces in '500 GB Drive' i wonder?

no idea really, just guessing

Then you might try and replace it with the following to escape the spaces.

Code: Select all

XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/media/500\ GB\ Drive/Music"

[gary.zw]

I tried all the suggestions except the one by Vincent but it will not work-- I even install ubuntu tweak which allows you to change the folder paths through it. Vincent's suggestion will work but I don't like the little shortcut arrows on the folder icons.

[Charles123]

Hi - I'm not the OP but want to do more or less exactly the same thing. I was resigned to using symbolic links as suggested by Vincent, but now I see there maybe another way, so thanks to gary.gw, Vincent Vermeulen & lurkatron Is there a reason NOT to point Music/Downloads/Videos to another path by editting user-dirs.dirs? Is it bad general practise, as Vincent said he uses links instead? I'm not using a removable drive so it will always be present at boot in my particular case.

Charles

[gary.zw]

Hi - I'm not the OP but want to do more or less exactly the same thing. I was resigned to using symbolic links as suggested by Vincent, but now I see there maybe another way, so thanks to gary.gw, Vincent Vermeulen & lurkatron Is there a reason NOT to point Music/Downloads/Videos to another path by editting user-dirs.dirs? Is it bad general practise, as Vincent said he uses links instead? I'm not using a removable drive so it will always be present at boot in my particular case.

Charles

Vincent's suggestion to create a symbolic link worked the best-- by changing the emblem-symbolic-link.png in the "/usr/share/icons/gnome/" folder to blnk you can get rid of the arrow icon on the folder.

[Charles123]

I changed my dirs.dirs line to XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/media/Data/Videos" but it has not quite had the desired effect. I had hoped this would make the folder "/media/Data/Videos" "appear" to be "~/Videos" but instead it just changed the icon of /media/Data/Videos.

This leads me to 3 questions;

1.Is it even possible to do what I initially wanted, change directory from ~ to ~/Videos but actually be in /media?Data/Videos? The more I think about it, the less plausible it sounds unless....

2.Instead of mounting the partition to /media/Data, could I mount it to /home/charles or would this mess my system up?

3.I tried changing the icon for a symbolic link & while the icon changed it kept the link arrow. Do I need something like Ubuntu Tweek to remove the arrows? (I remember from my windows days you needed Tweakui to do the equivilent)

[gary.zw]

To remove the link arrow you need to replace the "emblem-symbolic-link.png" in the /usr/share/icons/gnome 32x32 folder and all the other folders in that directory with the new "emblem-symbolic-link.png"--you need to be root when you edit, in the terminal "gksu nautilus" without the quotes will start nautilus in root and then go to the /usr/share/icons/gnome folder. I have attached the file "emblem-symbolic-link.png" which is 16x16 you can use gimp to resize it to 32x32 and the other sizes in the folder.

I changed my dirs.dirs line to XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/media/Data/Videos" but it has not quite had the desired effect. I had hoped this would make the folder "/media/Data/Videos" "appear" to be "~/Videos" but instead it just changed the icon of /media/Data/Videos.

This leads me to 3 questions;

1.Is it even possible to do what I initially wanted, change directory from ~ to ~/Videos but actually be in /media?Data/Videos? The more I think about it, the less plausible it sounds unless....

2.Instead of mounting the partition to /media/Data, could I mount it to /home/charles or would this mess my system up?

3.I tried changing the icon for a symbolic link & while the icon changed it kept the link arrow. Do I need something like Ubuntu Tweek to remove the arrows? (I remember from my windows days you needed Tweakui to do the equivilent)

[Charles123]

Thanks for clearing up question 3 for me. I had been browsing the icons in /usr/share/icons/Mint-X when Iof course I should have been making a replacement for the generic link icon in the /usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/emblems folder all along.

Having slept on questions 1 & 2 it now seems clear it wouldn't work - it is essentially using a separate /home partition which is what I'm trying to avoid. I want common data files integrated into 2 or 3 OS's without having any user or config conflicts that I imagine a /home parttition might well cause.

So for now I'm going to edit dirs.dirs appropriately (I assume this is recommended, so that the OS knows where /Videos, /Music etc are located), and then putting symbolic links (with edited icons) in /home/charles to re-create the default visual appearance of /home/charles.

[gary.zw]

The Music, Video and Picture folders should be made so they can easly moved to another drive--I have tons music and videos which I do not want on the same drive as my OS, if I need to re-install Mint Linux they would be lost and I would have to spend hours moving them from my back up drive back to the OS drive. Ubuntu Tweak makes an attempt at doing this but when you re-boot it goes back to the default settings. With Windows it is simple to move these folders to another drive-- it should be the same with Linux.

[Charles123]

I totally get what you're saying Gary but I can't see it ever happening. I think the process I outlined in my previous post is considered the 'easy' way to by Linux standards - It wasn't really that hard to figure out with a few pointers, and how often are you really going to need to re-install. The sort of people who think about making re-installs easier/safer (myself included) generally have the competance to follow these steps, and for those whom editing a config file etc. is too complex - they would never even contemplate attempting a re-install whatever the OS!

Did you ever have the bug of the dissapearing Volume Icon in the system tray? On every Win 98/XP machine I had, after a couple of months it would dissappear even though the chekbox "show volume icon in system tray" was stil ticked! You could uncheck/re-check but it would dissappear again at some point. Infuriating! I feel sure there would have been a way to fix this with one simple line in the Terminal if the problem were a Linux one., but as it was Windows we just had to put up with it.

It's swings & roundabouts - we gain a OS that does what we tell it, but we lose the simplicity of an OS that just does things automatically (like re-assign /Videos) without us knowing how it's done (even if we actually want to know what's going on behind the scenes).

For me, the whole appeal of PC's is the open standard - just bcause brand x built my mobo doesn't mean anything else has to be & the same goes for my choices of software .... (ok I know in the real world it doesn't always work out this simply but go with the principle). I see Linux as a contiuation of this concept into the OS. Windows gives me a playground to play in by as long as it's by it's rules (oh, & pay for the privillidge) whereas Linux says here's a playground but if you don't like something then you're welcome to try to make it more how you would like. It's not always possible, but at least we're given the option to try.

I suppose the debate is should Linux (Mint or otherwise) seek to compete/replace Windows by being 'User friendly' enough for the masses ie. Idiot proof but limited, should it be a hardcore nerdy/geek thing where the end user has ultimate control over everything - albeit requiring in-depth knowledge of the OS & CLI, or somewhere in between?
In my opinion, Linux Mint strikes a pretty good balance - almost everything works out of the box, it looks good & comes with everything a basic user needs pre-installed eg. Media players, Browsers, Office etc. For those who desire though, they can chop and change packages & have their system exactly how they like.

Sorry if that went off on a bit of a tangent & thanks to anyone who can find any semblence of sense in my ramblings.

[gary.zw]

I do totally agree Charles123 I prefer Linux over Windows any day-- I do a Bare Metal back up using "Redo Backup and Recovery" so when I tweak something that messes up my system I can have it back the same condition in 10 min.

I really don't mind editing a config file but it can be a problem locating that config file at times-- a little google searching though solves that problem. Today I was adding backgrounds to the /usr/share/backgrounds but they would not show up in the "Change Desktop Background" selection when you right click on the desktop-- after a bit of searching I found that the linuxmint-maya-extra.xml needed to be edited to include the new backgrounds-- It would be nice if there were more "How To" tutorials.

[xenopeek]

This is going off-topic. Let's stay on topic about "Change default Music folder Path", though I think it's been answered.

Please move other support requests or chat about Linux to respective areas of the forums, thanks

[gary.zw]

This is going off-topic. Let's stay on topic about "Change default Music folder Path", though I think it's been answered.

Please move other support requests or chat about Linux to respective areas of the forums, thanks

Is there away to mark this as solved?

[remoulder]

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=83444 point 8.

[xenopeek]

Just to add quickly that I recently discovered the 'bind' command does exatly what I was looking for. See; viewtopic.php?f=42&t=74321
I used option 3 (bind-home.conf method) & it works like a charm.

Charles.