http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=662902
This project is for anyone that has or is thinking of building a dedicated music server as a replacement for traditional CD transports. The basic goal is to provide the simplest possible avenue for someone to get a Linux system based around Music Player Daemon up and running. There are a lot of people building dedicated music servers on the hifi and audio boards, and it seems like the majority of them go for Windows or Mac as Linux is too complex a pill to swallow. I've always been a big fan of Music Player Daemon and am hoping a simplified setup like this may introduce more users to the project.
Basic Features:
- Music Player Daemon 0.16.6, full complement of codecs and streaming support
- Wizards for MPD & basic system setup
- Smart shuffle functions built in courtesy of Albumbler and mpd sima
- Remote control & LCD support for platforms using Soundgraph iMon via LCDProc, empcd & lcdmpdclient
- Small size - iso is 60MB
- LastFM/Scrobbling support built in
- Built in webserver for serving up cover art to clients
- Avahi/Zeroconf built in for simplified mpd client discovery
- Hardened to always run in a read-only mode - treat it like an appliance
- Various (optional) audio manipulation capabilities, e.g. libsamplerate, ALSA equalizer
- A variety of MPD CLI clients and utilities included
Installation/Ugrade
- Download links version 0.9.2 (md5 is 3cab315025270d23c43a18c473c5237b ):
Installation Prerequisites
- Flash Media, minimum 256MB (USB Stick or CF-SATA, or whatever you can boot off of)
Format using FAT32, Single partion
Unetbootin or similar software
A network file share (i.e. NAS, Windows, or Mac CIFS/SMB share) or separate hard disk with your music library.
- Download the iso file from one of the links above.
Insert your formatted USB Stick/Flash media into your computer
Install and Launch unetbootin
Select the second 'Diskimage' option, browse to and select the ISO image
Drive type will be USB drive, make sure you've selected the same drive letter/designator as the flash media.
Click 'ok' and wait for the installation to complete.
Remove the flash media and insert into the music server
Upgrading from a previous release to 0.9.2:- You can optionally back up the 'mpd' folder on your flash media device, which contains your mpd database and playlists. Any other files that were created by the previous installer should be deleted. Follow the new installation instructions and restore the mpd folder afterward.
- Flash Media, minimum 256MB (USB Stick or CF-SATA, or whatever you can boot off of)
- You have a choice between doing the basic configuration using point and click or remotely from a CLI.
If you're using a USB DAC make sure it's plugged in before booting.
Make sure the machine is plugged into the network.
- Monitor/Keyboard/Mouse Install
- Hit whatever keys are required to get into the BIOS during the bootup.
Make certain the BIOS is configured to boot from the right media.
Disable on-board sound in the BIOS if you're not planning on using it.
Go through the self explanatory monitor wizard and Xwindows should start.
Xwindows will launch the MPD Configuration Wizard automatically at this point.
- This works best if Bonjour/Zeroconf is on your system (default on Mac and many Linux installs. Also installs with iTunes on Windows. Download here if you need it.
Once the system is booted, SSH to tunes.local
user/pass is root/woofwoof
On the initial boot the MPD Config Wizard will automatically launch.
To navigate the ssh dialogs you use a combination of tab and arrow keys. Enter to confirm the specified settings.
- Hit whatever keys are required to get into the BIOS during the bootup.
- Sound Configuration
- The Wizard goes through Soundcard, Storage Configuration, and Static IP Config. Except for the Static IP the steps are basically identical for Console or GUI users.
Go through the Welcome Screen, Select your sound output to your DAC from the list.
You'll be given an opportunity to check the sound output to make sure you got it right. Make sure your stereo is on and correctly hooked up to your sound device. If you don't hear any sound you can go back and choose another output.
Provide a name for the Sound Output.
You'll be asked to optionally configure an equalized output and volume control.
Continue on to the storage configuration.
- The first dialog will ask you whether your audio is stored locally or via a network share.
The CIFS configuration dialogs will first ask you for the IP address, username, and password for your network share.
The next dialog will ask for the name of the Share itself.
If the root of the share is above your Music library then enter the sub-folder for the music library here. Be sure to get the case correct. If the Music library is the root of the share then leave the second box blank.
You'll then get a chance to confirm and test these settings. Go through those options, and if the test fails you can go back and change the settings.
Note local storage support is new and the audio directory currently limited to a separate drive or partition from the boot device.
The local storage wizard will have you select a drive and subdirectory where your audio data is located.
- If the wizards detect a Soundgraph iMon LCD/Remote then you'll be asked whether you want those functions enabled, along with the default settings for the LCD screen.
- You'll be asked after this if you want to set up a static IP. This is optional but recommended as most MPD Clients don't support Bonjour.
The setup is slightly different for GUI vs. SSH users. SSH is self explanatory.
For GUI User's you'll see a list of interfaces, and you'll need to select a button for your interface, in most cases Eth0.
Then Click the 'Static IP' button. Enter the IP in the following window, then click through the various confirmation/Done dialogs.
- GUI users will be asked to change the default Password at this point - this is strongly recommended.
Because of the security context the CLI based MPD Wizard is running in this isn't possible for SSH users, so you'll need to do this later.
- The Wizard goes through Soundcard, Storage Configuration, and Static IP Config. Except for the Static IP the steps are basically identical for Console or GUI users.
Saving the Config
- The final step in the wizard will ask you to reboot. This is recommended unless there is something else you want to change.
During the shutdown you'll be asked to create a save file, follow these steps, any size save file should be sufficient, smaller is fine.
After rebooting the server will be fully operational.
- MPD requires a separate client, there are many to choose from.
For iPhone/iPad users there is MPoD/MPaD, both of which will auto-discover your new server on the network.
Most other clients will require you to configure the IP address of your music server.
Look here for a full list of clients.
MPDPup has a full complement of CLI clients built in if you like to access your system using SSH: mpc, ncmpc, ncmpcpp, Practical Music Search (pms)
Contributing/Hacking on mpdPup
- I'm happy to announce that mpdPup now has it's own optional development files for people who would like to hack on or contribute to it.
Download here: (md5 is 62fd02533781cd70f4bc5c65624a3b77 )To use this file, just place it on the flash media used in the installation instructions.
Then launch the Puppy Linux boot manager and configure it to load the devx file at startup.
I've taken a different approach with this devx vs. other Puppy Linux variations. Several 'heavy' applications such as Geany & Firefox are only available when using the devx file. Since mpdPup is hard-coded to run from RAM I wanted to make the base file as small as possible, but provide maximum flexibility to anyone developing on the platform.
mpdPup is binary compatible with Debian Squeeze, so you should also be able to use any of those Debian packages. Better package management is a future to-do item.
- This release is marked 0.9.2 There are a variety of minor known issues with this release:
- The ESI Juli@ seems to have problems with 176/192 Khz audio files. My own ESI Juli@ died, and it's possibly related to my specific card - if this is an issue for you and important then stick with 0.9.1,download here or here.
- empcd is unable to call albumbler when the system is started - this will work if the user manually restarts empcd from the local console.
- Albumbler will attempt to queue directories which contain no audio data
- JWM's themes are a bit messed up, as is a fair amount of basic desktop usability. Since a full functioning desktop isn't one of this project's goals that's not a barrier to incrementing a release, but I would like to improve this in the future.
- Support for automount/hotplug actions for USB drives and expand local storage support.
Realtime Kernel (The BFS scheduler may make this moot)
Serial Console Support (partially implemented in 0.9.2)
Improve/Expand the remote control/LCD support
Continue Improving the wizards for various MPD/Client features
More MPD community projects built in
Add Web Interfaces
Package Management
Squeezebox Support