‘Draggable’ playlist NSLU2

[narsaw]

I am currently using mt-daapd on my hacked Linksys NSLU2 SAN device. Works great. Thanks.

I have a few questions.

1. Can the playlist be located anywhere other than

/opt/etc/mt-daapd/mt-daapd.playlist 

?
I placed it on my external HDD

/share/hdd/data/public/mp3/mt-daapd.playlist

but it does not read it from there (no playlist show up when I start iTunes (WINDOWS VERSION).

2. The playlist I am using is the ‘smart type playlist’ where I have statements like:

"Hip-Hop" { genre includes "Hip-Hop" }

Is there a way to use iTunes while running in Windows to create playlist that I can just drag songs into?

In a nutshell is there a way to create customized playlist in iTunes that I can drag songs into from the ‘NSLU2 Music’ server?

Thanks

[velociped]

In answer to your first question, yes, one should be able to locate the playlist file for the stable release anywhere which the daemon can “see” it. The declaration in the configuration file is followed by a path statement. So, you could conceivably place it where you like as long as you declare the location.

The answer to your seccond question is an unfortunate and well documented “no”. Libraries shared via DAAP are read-only. Since playlists are part of the iTunes library hierarchy, it is not presently possible to create a playlist from shared tracks on a remote system — even if the playlist file is stored locally.

That said, unless I am mistaken, such functionality is a part of the long-range development plan for mt-daapd. The ability to create playlists may be integrated into the web administration interface for the daemon. Rescan and push functions will undoubtedly be part of that ability. However, unless Apple changes the support paradigm for shared DAAP libraries, one will likely not be able to accomplish such from within the application itself.

Herman

[narsaw]

Thanks for the replay.

As far as placing the playlist anywhere I will have to try again. I thought the I read somewhere on this forum that the path directive in the mt-daapt.conf file is not being used anymore. Is this the case?

Since I ‘uslung’ my external drive to ‘disk1’, then at boot time, when the mt-daapd deamon starts, disk1 should be visable, right? And there should be able to read the playlist list file from anywhere on the ext drive.

Thanks again.

[velociped]

Two comments…

First, I am assuming you to be using the stable release for the slug (0.2.1.1). If that is the case, then the playlist declaration in the configuration file is being used as the source.

OTOH, should that assumption be incorrect and you are using one of the nightlies subsequent to or including the 20 March itsy package, then the daemon is running with the SQLite backend and support for the playlist file is deprecated. So, it does not matter where you put the .playlist file; it will never be seen, since it is no longer used as a playlist source.

For the SQLite backend (e.g. the nightlies), it will be necessary to make use of an XML-based playlist (i.e. that generated by iTunes), an .m3u file or to manually insert them into the database. Examples for the latter exist in various tarball release notes and in the following two forum discussions [1],[2]. Note that there have been reports of problems when using Windows generated XML playlist files. Though this was apparently fixed with the release of the 13 July package.

As far as the .playlist file being available on the external drive, if you have properly uNSLUng the device, then mt-daapd is already installed on the external drive. The default installation path is /opt/etc/mt-daapd/mtdaapd.playlist and, on a properly uNSLUng system, the /opt directory is symbolically linked to the “disk 1” drive at /share/hdd/conf/opt.

Herman

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