usm

[unix sample manager] search TERABYTES of samples across different (network) disks in few seconds (+offline)

UPDATE 19-02-2023: usm now automatically symlinks the searchresults to a folder (which you can open in your daw/app etc) ❤

Usage

The problem

How to quickly search thru terabytes of samples across different harddrives/clouddrives? And what if they're offline?

This is a problem scientists, audiodesigners and videoartists sometimes face.

solution: the good old locate unix tool

Installation

lets index some huge folders

$ sudo apt-get install mlocate dialog
$ mkdir ~/.mlocate 
$ updatedb --output ~/.mlocate/samples    --root /home/myusername/samples 
$ updatedb --output ~/.mlocate/myusbdiskB --root /mnt/myusbdiskB/projects
$ updatedb --output ~/.mlocate/dropbox    --root /mnt/Dropbox/audio
$ updatedb --output ~/.mlocate/gdrive     --root /mnt/Gdrive/myrockband

depending on your mlocate version, use one of these:

$ echo "export LOCATE_PATH=/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db:$(find ~/.mlocate/* | sed 'N;s|\n|:|g')" >> ~/.bashrc
$ echo "export LOCATE_PATH=~/.mlocate" >> ~/.bashrc

now lets install usm

$ wget "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coderofsalvation/usm/master/usm"
$ chmod 755 usm
$ sudo cp usm /usr/local/bin/.

optional: install rclone to easily mount clouddrives to local folders (great for small harddrives)

Unix ninja's

USM is just a wrapper for the locate tool. You can also search indexes without USM:

$ locate -r 'kick.*\.wav' -l10     # show first 10 regex matches

Also, USM's default preview-action is to play it as audio. This can be overruled by running USM like so:

$ ACTION=~/bin/myviewer usm

This will simply open the selected file with ~/bin/myviewer

Background

The author struggled for years with a proper solution. As a sounddesigner his audio / instrument library kept growing and growing. Searching thru network drives (sshfs / nfs / samba) is too slow in many cases, and not possible offline. USM only touches a networkdrive when preview or saving a file.