NSLU2 is shown in iTunes, but not used

[RigasW]

Hello everybody,

I had been running the twonky media server on my nslu2 device under the OpenSlug OS for half a year. The Slug and twonky broadcasted music to my Noxon iRadio; that was fine with pop music, but the non existing possibilties of sorting with Twonky made me finally look for something different.

So I found and installed Firefly on my Slug. Installation was without any problems.

Slug OS: Openslug 3.1
Firefly Version: 0.2.3

From my Windows XP browser, I can administer Firefly. It tells me, that it found more than 2000 mp3 files on the nslu.

The NSLU device also shows up in iTunes on the left side of the screen under “Commonly used” (or so, I use the German version, there it says “Gemeinsam Genutzt”.

But if I click on the name of the device, the LOCAL list of songs dissapear for a second or two … and then the songs on my computer are shown again.

I then made firefly use a password for the connection to my music. When clicking in itunes, the password question came up, but the music list did not show …. (I think it responds equally whether I enter the right or wrong password …)

What did I miss?

Any settings in iTunes 7.1?

Just for reading songs from the nslu – do I need a SMB share? (I use the nslu for backing up and send the files from the Windows machines with WinSCP … so I have no SAMBA and I am happy about that fact…)

What I would like to have in the end is a thin Linux client that boots from a cd rom or via PXE over the network and a daapd client on that ….

Any ideas?

Regards

Rigas

[RigasW]

In the meantime I did some research by myself and installed the “Get it together” java client.

It connects successfully to the slug and can play the music!
So I am happy to see that I do not need Samba …

BUT:

– every mp3 file is listed twice …
– the sorting order is weired (not usable, if you want to listen to audio books or to classical music ….)

Is this sorting done by the firefly backend or by the frontend client?
(I had the same sorting problem with Twonky ….)
Will the sorting be correct if I use iTunes as a frontend device? (Does iTunes evaluate the files in a different way so that it can produce different … and correct … sorting results … ?)

Regards,

Rigas

[rpedde]

@RigasW wrote:

I
Is this sorting done by the firefly backend or by the frontend client?
(I had the same sorting problem with Twonky ….)
Will the sorting be correct if I use iTunes as a frontend device? (Does iTunes evaluate the files in a different way so that it can produce different … and correct … sorting results … ?)

Yes, traditionally sorting is done by the client. Some devices don’t sort though (GiT, for example). It really should probably be done on the server for dumb clients like GiT, but I’ve just not done it yet.

As far as being listed twice, you can use sqlite to directly look at the database and see where the duplicate files are coming from. Probably there really *are* two copies of the files (backup copy, maybe?)

— Ron

[RigasW]

Hello Ron,

thanks for your answer.

The problem with the double entries can be solved be “reconnecting” to the firefly server from within “Get it together”.

In most cases, sorting seems to be ok (songs are listed in the order which they have on the CD and not alphabetically ….)

But with audio books it does not work … even if the files are named like:

01-blabla
02- blabal
03-blabla …

They seem to come in a random order.

Rigas

[rpedde]

@RigasW wrote:

01-blabla
02- blabal
03-blabla …

They are in the order that they appear in the file system, usually the order in which they were copied to the drive.

I hope to add server-side sorting soon. Hopefully as soon as next week. I have the whole week off, so I hope to get some good coding in next week.

— Ron

[RigasW]

Hello Ron,

that sounds great.
(But as far as I tested it, the only thing that I am missing is the sorting of audio books … as explained above … Pop songs and classical music comes in the right order …)

What would you advise as mt-daapd client on a thin linux client (booting over ethernet via PXE or from a flash-card?

BTW – I use OpenSlug 3.1 and when I did

ipgk install mt-daapd

it installed version 0.2.3

Is’nt there an newer stable version?

Regards,

Rigas

[rpedde]

@RigasW wrote:

Hello Ron,

that sounds great.
(But as far as I tested it, the only thing that I am missing is the sorting of audio books … as explained above … Pop songs and classical music comes in the right order …)

What would you advise as mt-daapd client on a thin linux client (booting over ethernet via PXE or from a flash-card?

I don’t really know any thin clients for daap. Truthfully, slim might be a better fit there.

BTW – I use OpenSlug 3.1 and when I did

ipgk install mt-daapd

it installed version 0.2.3

Is’nt there an newer stable version?

Yes, 0.2.4 is the newest stable.

— Ron

[RigasW]

Do you know, wether the latest stable version runs with OpenSlug 3.1?

ipkg install mt-daapd

installs the old version that I allready have …

Rigas

[rpedde]

@RigasW wrote:

Do you know, wether the latest stable version runs with OpenSlug 3.1?

ipkg install mt-daapd

installs the old version that I allready have …

Rigas

It would work fine, except that it doesn’t seem that anyone is maintaining the package in openslug. I don’t have commit rights to openslug, just unslung, so I can’t do anything there.

— Ron

[RigasW]

ok,

now my configuaration works quite ok:

I use the old 0.2.3 version running on a slug with OpenSlug 3.1. It hosts almost 4000 songs and has proved to be stable for some weeks now.

My “Thin Client” is a machine built with a via epia board without disks nor drives, that is connected to my receiver.
It boots over the network via PXE (the PXE linux image also lies on the slug …)

Linux starts and so does the mt-daapd client Git “Get it together”. It connects to the slug … and can play all songs.

The only thing I do not now is how to make and use playlists with this setting.
May be I get myself a second slug one day and install a newer version of firefly …

Thanks for that excellent software.

Rigas

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