Let’s start at the beginning… What is Firefly?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

As you can see I’m an “extreme” newbie. I have been sent a link to this site by someone suggesting I use Firefly. Basically I am after a system whereby I can store all my music centrally and then connect to it via iTunes – that is to say, I want full iTunes controllability from any machine on my network.

Is this something I can do with Firefly? What spec do I need? How do I set it up? Could I use a G4 running OSX or will I need OSX Server? Could I possibly run this on a Bubba Server if I buy one?

As you can see, lots of questions need answering 😉 if there’s a FAQ which covers all this stuff (in plain English if you please, I’m not a Unix/Linux ‘fan’ so be gentle with me!) 🙂

Thanks,

:-Joe

[rpedde]

@jowie wrote:

Is this something I can do with Firefly? What spec do I need? How do I set it up? Could I use a G4 running OSX or will I need OSX Server? Could I possibly run this on a Bubba Server if I buy one?

That’s what this is. It’s like iTunes music sharing without the iTunes. A g4 would work fine for this purpose. Here (http://preview.tinyurl.com/yrrjwj
) is a verstion that should work fine on your g4.

Just double-click on it and let it scan.

As far as the bubba server, their web page seems to indicate it already has firefly installed in firmware.

— Ron

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

Thanks for the link! I will have a look at it shortly. Now that there seems to be a Mac version of Firefly, do I have to go through all the installation instructions that involve the Terminal, as shown in the help Wiki here?

I’m still tempted to get a Bubba so I’m not totally sure about installing this on my G4 yet. It’d be great to have some low-power server which ran all my media-type stuff.

I have a list of questions I need to get off my chest:

1. How exactly does Firefly manifest itself in iTunes? Is there a login?
2. If I install it on a Bubba Server, how do I rip CDs to Firefly?
3. Does music copied to Firefly arrange itself in the same directory structure as iTunes?
4. What happens if I am logged in to the same Firefly music library from two computers?
5. Do I just edit song ID tags from within iTunes as if the library was on my client machine?

I’m sorry if there is a FAQ answering all these questions, if there is please point me to it and I’ll leave you all alone! 😉

Thanks!

[Shorne]

I have similar questions. Will FF allow adding new music over the network to an HP Media Vault? and can i sync to the ipods. I currently have multiple users, each with their own libraries and ipods.

I’ve tried to install this on the HP Media Vault following this:

http://www.k0lee.com/hpmediavault/iTunes/index.html

But have had no luck installing, any help would be appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Now that there seems to be a Mac version of Firefly, do I have to go through all the installation instructions that involve the Terminal, as shown in the help Wiki here?

short answer is ‘no’

http://nightlies.fireflymediaserver.org/version.php?version=svn-1586

go grab the .dmg version which is the mac version & is a self-installed thingy.

Couple of things to bear in mind once installed and you’re setting up firefly in the preference pane:

shorten the name firefly gives itself – a long name will bum it out.
remember to open up a port in the firewall – if you’re not sure how then holler.
firefly will show in bonjour – from there you can configure various options including what file types firefly should handle/playlist options etc. Look out for the advanced configuration link which opens up all those options.

How exactly does Firefly manifest itself in iTunes? Is there a login?

firefly shows up under the shared music triangle (remember to enable itunes sharing in itunes prefs)
If memory serves me correct, the admin login is blank and the password is mt-daapd but someone correct me if I’m wrong…

Does music copied to Firefly arrange itself in the same directory structure as iTunes?

Firefly is *only* serving the music so you’re not copying anything to firefly, rather firefly is serving the music as per where you pointed it to in the initial setup (on a standard mac setup that would be /user/Music/iTunes/).

What happens if I am logged in to the same Firefly music library from two computers?

so long as your itunes sharing is enabled on your various machines and they’re running firefly then you can serve up music from any of those boxes. Same principle as itunes sharing.

Do I just edit song ID tags from within iTunes as if the library was on my client machine?

yep… and then do a rescan of the library for firefly to pick up those changes. BTW you can set rescan intervals from within the config page – personally I prefer 0 then manually rescan when I actually add something to the library.

Enjoy! 😀

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the info Andy!

I’m a little confused though, from the sounds of it all Firefly is doing is sharing iTunes Libraries, in the same way iTunes would if it were running on a machine. Am I missing something?

I’m still not sure how I am supposed to edit my files from a remote machine. If I’m just connecting to Firefly’s share through iTunes Sharing, how can I edit names and ID tags etc from a remote machine?

Sorry I’m a really slow learner 😳 but once I get to grips with something I’m usually ok… 😀

[Anonymous]

I’m a little confused though, from the sounds of it all Firefly is doing is sharing iTunes Libraries, in the same way iTunes would if it were running on a machine. Am I missing something?

that’s pretty much it – the thing about firefly being that you don’t have to use itunes; is multi OS compatible; handles a greater variety of different filetypes including the popular lossless FLAC format; and if you have firefly installed on a network device such as a NSLU2 or Buffalo Linkstation etc. you can leave the computer out of the equation – it doesn’t need to be on in order for firefly to serve the music.

I’m still not sure how I am supposed to edit my files from a remote machine. If I’m just connecting to Firefly’s share through iTunes Sharing, how can I edit names and ID tags etc from a remote machine?

Well if your machines can talk to each other and you can access the files in your music folder from another machine then you can use itunes or some other tag editor prog. And then have firefly rescan to pick up those changes.

[Anonymous]

@andyg wrote:

that’s pretty much it – the thing about firefly being that you don’t have to use itunes; is multi OS compatible; handles a greater variety of different filetypes including the popular lossless FLAC format; and if you have firefly installed on a network device such as a NSLU2 or Buffalo Linkstation etc. you can leave the computer out of the equation – it doesn’t need to be on in order for firefly to serve the music.

Well that’s still pretty cool. It’d save me from having my hugely power hungry G4 Tower on when playing music.

Well if your machines can talk to each other and you can access the files in your music folder from another machine then you can use itunes or some other tag editor prog. And then have firefly rescan to pick up those changes.

Hmmm… But normally iTunes may only edit file data if it is local – or pointing at an iTunes Music Folder with the correct directory structure. Connecting to a shared iTunes music library doesn’t allow for any file editing.

In order to edit songs and ID info, I’d need to get my iTunes pointing at the Bubba for its own internal library. If then that iTunes is also looking at Bubba for the shared DAAP, I can see multiple files being accessed at the same time and possible file corruption and/or iTunes crashing. It seems a little bit messy for iTunes… 🙁

My alternative would be to get a Mac Mini as a media server, and running iTunes permanently on that. This way I’d be able to edit my music data using remote desktop. But I’d much rather a solution using Bubba, the Mac Mini solution seems a little OTT. At present though I can’t see any way of doing this…

I can’t imagine using some other app to edit my iTunes library, I do a lot of batch editing of files and using the Grouping field to tag my tracks for Smart Playlists…

[jtbse]

@jowie wrote:

I’m a little confused though, from the sounds of it all Firefly is doing is sharing iTunes Libraries, in the same way iTunes would if it were running on a machine. Am I missing something?

No..you are correct…Firefly just presents it’s library to iTunes clients in the same way that iTunes would to other iTunes clients. It’s just DAAP sharing.

@jowie wrote:

I’m still not sure how I am supposed to edit my files from a remote machine.

Well Firefly really doesn’t enable you to do this. It’s just a music server, not a music manager. To manage your library over your LAN, it needs to be located on a network share or disk that you can access directly from the “remote” machine. Then in iTunes (assuming that’s your preferred library management application), you configure to point your “local” library to the shared location. Not being very Mac-literate, I can’t provide much more detail than that….sorry.

[EDIT:…u guys are just way too fast for me….by the time I posted this, there were two more replys!!….so feel free to ignore] 😀

[Anonymous]

@jtbse wrote:

To manage your library over your LAN, it needs to be located on a network share or disk that you can access directly from the “remote” machine. Then in iTunes (assuming that’s your preferred library management application), you configure to point your “local” library to the shared location. Not being very Mac-literate, I can’t provide much more detail than that….sorry.

No that’s okay – I could do that, but only if it’s possible to set up Firefly to arrange its folders in the same way iTunes does. If it doesn’t then it’s probably no good. 🙁

iTunes aside, what do all you Firefly users use to manage your music libraries?

[Author]

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