The mAirList Blog

Another maintenance release of mAirList 3.0 is now available. Includes severa bug fixes and a couple of improvements. All users are advised to upgrade at their earliest convenience.

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An update of mAirList 3.0 has been released today. It contains various bug fixes as well as some minor improvements.

This is the last feature update of the mAirList 3.0 release. New features will now go into the upcoming Version 3.1. A first beta release will be available within the next few days. Bug fixes will of course be applied to mAirList 3.0 as long as the new version is still in beta.

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Starting from mAirList 3.0.11, the compatibility with Vista and Windows 7 has been improved by changing the place mAirList stores its configuration data in.

The Problem

Previous version of mAirList stored all configuration files in the “config” subfolder of the mAirList program directory, that is, usually in the folder C:\Program Files\mAirList 3.0\config. The same applied to some other files like the default local mAirListDB file database.db, the license file license.lic and the standard desktop template standard.mlt, which were stored in the same folder as the main executable, that is, in C:\Program Files\mAirList 3.0.

Although discouraged by Microsoft, this has worked pretty well on most systems, however, due to the new user management features of Vista and Windows 7, things have become a little more complicated. In particular, when the user does not have any write access in the Program Files folder (because he is not an administrator), he will not be able save the configuration. Windows detects this sort of problem, and it “solves” it by using a technique called virtualization: The files are “redirected” to a writable directory inside the user’s profile folder, namely C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\mAirList 3.0. This has confused a lot of people (including myself), and it makes it even harder to locate your config files for manual editing, or save a standard.mlt file.

The Solution

The solution is actually pretty easy: mAirList will store its configuration (and database files and standard files) into a place that is intended for this purpose, the common application data folder:

C:\ProgramData\mAirList\3.0 (Vista and Windows 7) or
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\AppData\mAirList\3.0 (Windows 2000 and XP)

Why haven’t I done so in the first place? Because one of the key features of mAirList is that it doesn’t need to be “installed” but can be just copied into any folder, even on a USB stick to take with you. In that case, it’s not so good having the configuration stored in some system profile folder And actually, we need a trick to keep this sort of installation working…

Zip and Legacy Installations

If you didn’t use the installer to setup mAirList but downloaded the zip archive, you extracted it to some folder of your choice, and the configuration files will be in that folder, following the “old style” installation scheme outlined about. That is perfectly ok, because unlike Program Files, the folder you picked for extraction will of course be writable by you. So there is no need to change the way the config is stored in this case.

It’s not feasible to offer two different mAirList.exe files for download (one that uses the program folder, one that uses the common application data folder). Instead, we need a “dynamic” way to decide where the configuration is stored. And here is how it works:

• When mAirList is started, it checks if there is a “config” folder in the same folder as the mAirList.exe file.
• If there is, it will assume that this is an “old style” installation, and keep looking for config and standard files in the program directory.
• If there is no such folder, mAirList will assume that this is a “new style” installation, and look for configuration files in the common application data folder mentioned above.

The installer has been modified so it will not create a config folder inside the program folder but instead prepare the common application folder as needed; the zip download contains an empty config folder, so when you unzip and run that version, it will be an “old style” installation straight away.

Migrating Old Installations

If you installed mAirList 3.0 through the installer, the config directory is still in the program directory (or even in the virtualized store). Even when you upgrade to version 3.0.11 or newer, the config directory will not be touched, so your installation will continue to be an “old style” one. But it’s possible to convert your installation to a “new style” one following these steps:

1. Make sure that you have at least mAirList 3.0.11 installed.
2. Locate your current config directory, in particular, check the following places:
   • C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\mAirList 3.0
   • C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\mAirList
   • C:\Program Files\mAirList 3.0
   • C:\Program Files\mAirList

   Check the date and time of the current configuration files to confirm that you found the correct config folder. (When virtualization is active, there may be a config folder in Program Files which is not used at all.)

3. Move that config folder to a save place. Also move all of the following files, if existing, to that safe place: database.db, license.lic, defaultlicense.lic, standard.mlt, standard.mle, standard.mlc.
4. If your config folder was located in the virtual store, also delete the config folder from the C:\Program Files\mAirList (3.0) directory.
5. Start mAirList. It will complain that there is no license file and open License Manager. Close it again.
6. At the same time, mAirList has created the “new style” configuration directory for you:
   • C:\ProgramData\mAirList\3.0 (Vista and Windows 7) or
   • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\AppData\mAirList\3.0 (Windows 2000 and XP)
7. Locate that folder in Windows Explorer, and copy the config folder and any other file you backed up into it.
8. If you moved your database.db file during this process, open mAirListConfig, go to the Databases page and edit your database connection, using the Button Open existing database file to point mAirList to the new location of your database file.

That’s it

mAirList 3.0.11 has been realeased today. This version contains numerous bug fixes, as well as an updated version of the audio engine BASS, so all users are advised to upgrade to this release as soon as possible.

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mAirList 3.0.10 has been released to day. This release focuses on bug fixes. All customers are advised to update at their earliest convenience.

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mAirList 3.0.9 is now available for download. As we are slowly approaching the stable release, this version removes numerous bugs and glitches.But there are also a few new features, including:

• The system log can now be written to a file using the new “System Log File” logging facility.
• You can now set the IRC, AIM and ICQ fields when streaming to a Shoutcast server.
• The encoder can be linked to the On Air status so it connects and disconnects as you switch the status.
• It’s now possible to reference items from a mAirListDB database when importing playlists in M3U format. For example, to include the database item with the ID 8795, just put the following line into your .m3u file:

  #mAirList ID 8795

• By using the new “[Cartwall_0]” etc. sections in skin.ini, you can adjust the display of each cart player separately.

Important notice: In case you have set up passwords for configuration or shutdown, please delete your passwords.ini file before upgrade and set up your passwords again after you installed the new versions. This is because all passwords – including those for the encoder, database connections etc. – are now saved in a somewhat scrabled format which is incompatible to the way the config and shutdown password were saved in earlier versions. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting from today, I will no longer issue any licenses for mAirList 2.2. New users will have to use the (still free) Community Edition of mAirList 3.0 or purchase a Personal Edition license. Trust me, it’s worth the money.

The mAirList 2.2 downloads will still be available as mAirList 3 is in beta, and if you purchase a copy of mAirList 3, you will receive a license for both releases, just in case there are any stability problems with v3 – although I have to say that the new version has become very stable now, and the beta status is due to be removed soon.

mAirList 3.0.8 has been released. The main focus of this release is various improvements of the integrated stream encoder, and a few bug fixes.

Demo versions of Personal Edition and Professional Editions are now available for instant download without having to register first, however, they will only run for 30 minutes.

Here’s the list of changes:

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It’s been a while since I wrote here, due to some very relaxing three-week holiday in France and two not so relaxing weeks working on mAirList, in particular, removing some annoying bugs. People from the forum who tried the recent snapshots agreed that mAirList has gained stability and performance lately. It’s time for a new official release, version 3.0.7. Read the rest of this entry »

Along with the update of the stable branch, there is also a new version of mAirList 3.0 available today, with a number of bug fixes and enhancements, as usual. Read the rest of this entry »