positron/doc/common-tasks.html

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   4   <title>Positron User's Guide: Common Tasks</title>
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   7 <h1>Positron User's Guide: Common Tasks</h1>
   8
   9 <p>
  10 This section of the guide will help you get started using positron by
  11 example.  It does not try to explain every command in positron, but
  12 will guide you through common scenarios and show you how to use
  13 positron in those cases.  See the <a href="commands.html">Command
  14 Reference</a> for an exhaustive list of positron commands and options.
  15 </p>
  16
  17 <p>
  18 For all of these tasks, you must connect your Neuros to your computer
  19 and mount it.  When you are finished and ready to disconnect the
  20 Neuros, you must unmount it.  This is very important because Linux
  21 buffers disk writes, and if you do not unmount before disconnecting,
  22 it is possible to corrupt the Neuros database.  (See
  23 <a href="troubleshooting.html">Troubleshooting</a> for what to do
  24 if that happens.)
  25 </p>
  26
  27 <h2>Adding Files</h2>
  28
  29 <p>
  30 In this section, we will manually add files to the Neuros.  If you
  31 want to add all your music and have positron automatically keep it up
  32 to date, see the next section on "Synchronizing the Neuros."
  33 </p>
  34
  35 <p>
  36 To add a music track to the Neuros, just type:
  37 <pre>
  38 positron add my_music_track.mp3
  39 </pre>
  40
  41 This will copy my_music_track.mp3 to the default music directory on the
  42 Neuros (usually "MUSIC").
  43 </p>
  44
  45 <p>
  46 You can also add a whole directory of music files to the Neuros:
  47 <pre>
  48 positron add my_directory_of_music
  49 </pre>
  50
  51 Positron will preserve the directory structure.  Don't worry if the
  52 directory contains some files the Neuros can't play.  Positron checks
  53 the contents of each file and will only copy it over recognized music
  54 files (only MP3 and Ogg Vorbis at this point).  Additionally, positron
  55 will never overwrite a file on the Neuros if it already exists.  You
  56 can use this as a sort of "poor man's sync" by just adding the same
  57 directory whenever its contents change.  Only new music files will be
  58 copied.
  59 </p>
  60
  61 <p>
  62 If you want to add some files and a directory and
  63 specify its destination on the Neuros, you can do that with:
  64 <pre>
  65 positron add sourcefile1.mp3 sourcefile2.mp3 anotherdir /mnt/neuros/tunes
  66 </pre>
  67
  68 This will place a copy of <tt>sourcefile1.mp3</tt>,
  69 <tt>sourcefile2.mp3</tt>, and <tt>anotherdir</tt> in
  70 <tt>/mnt/neuros/tunes</tt>.
  71 </p>
  72
  73 <h2>Synchronizing the Neuros</h2>
  74
  75 <p>
  76 To synchronize your Neuros with your computer, first you need to
  77 <a href="config.html">configure your Neuros</a> and setup a syncpoint.
  78 (Although you can always run this command without a syncpoint, it
  79 won't do much without one.)  Once that is all set, all you have to do
  80 is run:
  81 <pre>
  82 positron sync
  83 </pre>
  84 and that's it!  Positron will do several things now:
  85 <ul>
  86   <li>Scan your syncpoints for new music files and copy them to the
  87    Neuros.</li>
  88
  89   <li>Scan your Neuros for new recordings and copies them to your computer.
  90   (This step is skipped if you didn't specify a directory to copy them to
  91   during configuration.</li>
  92
  93   <li>Remove unused space from your database if needed.
  94    This is called "packing."</li>
  95 </ul>
  96 </p>
  97
  98 <p>
  99 If you decide you don't want a particular Neuros recording on your
 100 computer, you can delete it using <tt>rm</tt> or some other standard
 101 file utility.  Positron remembers which recordings have been copied,
 102 and won't copy them again.  Of course, you can always manually copy a
 103 recording from the Neuros using <tt>cp</tt> or some other file
 104 utility.  The Neuros stores recordings in the <tt>WOID_RECORD</tt>
 105 subdirectory.
 106 </p>
 107
 108 <p>
 109 If you want positron to forget what recordings it has copied to your computer, use the command:
 110 <pre>
 111 positron sync --reset-recordings
 112 </pre>
 113 Similarly, you can get positron to forget what music files you have deleted (see next section) using
 114 <pre>
 115 positron sync --reset-deleted
 116 </pre>
 117 </p>
 118
 119 <h2>Removing Files</h2>
 120
 121 <p>
 122 Sometimes you want to remove a music file from the Neuros.  You should
 123 never, ever do this using normal file utilities.  They will remove the
 124 file on disk, but not remove the database entry.  Your Neuros will
 125 still show the track in its song list, but when you try to play it,
 126 the behavior will be unpredictable.
 127 </p>
 128
 129 <p>To remove a music track you can type something like:
 130 <pre>
 131 positron del /mnt/neuros/music/test.mp3
 132 </pre>
 133 Positron will both delete the file on the Neuros and remove the entry
 134 from the database.  You can delete many files with one command, and
 135 you can even delete whole directories of files!  Positron will never
 136 delete files (regardless of type) that are not referenced in the
 137 Neuros database, nor will it delete directories unless they are empty.
 138 </p>
 139
 140 <p>
 141 Positron will remember which files you have deleted and not recopy
 142 them when you next synchronize.  This way you can remove files on your
 143 Neuros that you don't want to listen to without having to remove them
 144 from your syncpoint.  However, you can always manually add a track
 145 using <tt>positron add</tt> whether or not it is in the list of
 146 deleted tracks.  As mentioned above, you can clear the delete list
 147 using:
 148 <pre>
 149 positron sync --reset-deleted
 150 </pre>
 151 </p>
 152
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