Soundbridge M1001 and FireFly

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 23 Oct 2007, 11:33

Hello,
I got a Pinnacle Soundbridge M1001 a week or so ago and have been copying my music files to \\bubba\storage\music but have a few problems, well, two basicly.

1) I've noticed that new songs/albums copied to bubba takes a really long time to show up on the Soundbridge (if they ever do). Yesterday, as a test, I copied a new album to bubba but even now, ~20h later it's still not visible on the Soundbridge. I did not make any other changes to the library except coying that new album in. So I restarted the DAAP service, waited 15min and now it's was OK - I've been doing this a lot the last week. I understand it can take some time (I have ~4000 files) but there seems to be something wrong when it doesn't show up in 20h.

2) How to manage playlists. Searching the various forums there seems to be quite some confusion generally regarding how playlists are supposed to work on the Soundbridge. Mostly regarding absolute or relative file paths etc but in my case the playlists doesn't show up on the Soundbridge at all. I've tried generating a playlist in Winamp (from the files on Bubba, of course) and then copy that .m3u file to \\bubba\storage\music but the Soundbridge says 0 playlists. I've also tried generating the playlist with Windows Mediplayer but they still dont' show up on the Soundbridge. (Even after restarting the DAAP service)

I've seen someone mentioning some configuration settings for the FireFly server but where are they and how do I change them?

I'd appreciate any pointers you may have on these issues.

TIA
/Henrik Olsson.

(Bubba v0.50.1-1, Soundbridge v3.0.44 over WiFi)

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 24 Oct 2007, 05:18

Hi!

There seem to be an issue with Firefly detecting new files in the music folder. A perhaps simpler solution than restarting the service is to start a new indexing from Firefly's web interface: http://bubba:3689

Regarding playlists I don't know, but am also very interested if someone has the solution.

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 24 Oct 2007, 11:45

Thanks Johannes!

Just knowing how to reach FireFly's web-interface is a huge step forward. Isn't that something worth mentioning in the manual? I had to try a few times with various users/passwords but after a while I got in

Once in there I looked around a bit and found a setting called: Process .m3u files which is set to No. Perhaps that has something to do with the playlists not showing. However, I can not change any of the settings. It says: Your config file is not writable - how can I change that (complete Linux dumb-ass here)?

Doing a rescan when new files are added is not really that big of a deal. Are you using FireFly "out-of-the-box" or are you customzing the code to integrate it with Bubba? In other words, when can there be a fix implemented?

Thanks again!

/Henrik.

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 24 Oct 2007, 17:55

Hi again!

I fiddled a little bit with the mt-daap (Firefly) config file (in /etc/mt-daapd.conf) and when setting the "process playlists" entry to "1", playlists work!

I suppose another way to change this setting would be to change the permissions of the file and edit it in the web interface, but I haven't tried this. I will put this in our bug tracker, I guess the config file should be editable from the web interface. But until it's fixed, you'll have to do it yourself. .

However, there seems to be something strange with that web config page, it doesn't read out the settings correctly. I'll have to take a closer look. And I still don't know why the automatic rescan doesn't always work, it's set to scan every 10 minutes if I understand correctly.

Anyways, playlists work now! One down!

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 25 Oct 2007, 02:39

Johannes,
That's good to hear! Now, how do I edit that file manually I can't seem to find/access the file logged in as admin or user so how/where do I find it?
(Remember: Linux newbie here...)

TIA
/Henrik.

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 25 Oct 2007, 04:43

Hi,

I always make the mistake to assume people here are techie, sorry.

First, read: http://excito.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=766 on how to get shell access (I just wrote that, many people ask).

Then, type:

Code: Select all

nano /etc/mt-daapd.conf

Find and uncomment the "process m3u" line, and set it = 1.

Press

Code: Select all

ctrl-x y

to save the file.

Reload the settings by doing:

Code: Select all

 /etc/init.d/mt-daapd stop

and then

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 /etc/init.d/mt-daapd start

This should do it!

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 25 Oct 2007, 15:34

Thank you for that detailed explanation, just what I needed. I couldn't make it work though.....

I edited the config file and restarted the server. The webinterface still says No on process .m3u files but I've verified that the particular line is indeed uncommented and changed to 1. My playlists are directly in the music folder but the Soundbridge still says 0 playlists (I did a rescan but it didn't help).

Johannes, where did you put your playlists in order for them to show on the Soundbridge and how did you generate them?

Also, there may not be a problem with the automatic scanning after all.... it seems like there has to be a client connected to the server in order for the automatic scanning to activate. I'm not 100% yet but there was a note in the config-file and it seems to work if I leave the Soundbridge turned on.

TIA
/Henrik.

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 26 Oct 2007, 04:43

Hi again,

Ok, i double checked my config file again, and this is how it looks when it works. I fiddled a little bit with changing permissions on this file and changing settings from the web UI, and perhaps the directive "process playlists" is needed? I think it showed up when I tried to change settings from the web UI.

Please try that and get back to me!

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#
# process_m3u
#
# By default m3u processing is turned off, since most m3u files
# sitting around in peoples mp3 directories have bad paths, and
# I hear about it.  :)
#
# If you are sure your m3u files have good paths (i.e. unixly pathed,
# with relative paths relative to the directory the m3u is in), then
# you can turn on m3u processing by setting this directive to 1.
#
# I'm not sure "unixly" is a word, but you get the idea.
#

process_playlists = 1
process_m3u = 1

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 26 Oct 2007, 04:44

And OK, I think you are right regarding the automatic scan, good to know!

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 26 Oct 2007, 05:57

Thanks Johannes,
I will try it again tonight and get back to you. Just to make sure, did you put your .m3u files directly in \\bubba\storage\music.

/Henrik.

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 26 Oct 2007, 07:31

The only ones I tested were located in subfolders (i.e. \\bubba\storage\music\The Knife\) Mt-daap found them all. It will most likely work wherever you place them under ..\music\

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 26 Oct 2007, 11:26

Aargh...
I didn't have that line at all in my .conf file so I added it so that the file now looks exactly like yours. I saved the file and restarted the server but the playlists still don't show up. Not when placed directly in \music nor in subfolders.

However I did get this message in the web-ui:

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Options missing from config.xml
The options below are in your mt-daapd.conf and Firefly uses them,
but this web page can't handle them until they are added to config.xml

general:process_playlists

Frustrating....

Thanks!
/Henrik.

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 27 Oct 2007, 06:20

Strange. And you made a new scan after you changed the last setting?

I got the web message as well, I can't explain it. It seems like some settings in the file aren't supported by the web settings page. And, even though m3u processing is enabled in my config file, the box shows "No" in the web UI. But since it works I didn't bother to dig deeper into this.

You can download my entire mt-daap.conf just in case I managed to change anything else here.

Also, try to restart your Bubba altogether in case the DAAP service restart didn't work properly.

And finally, the playlists showed up under the "Playlists" menu on my soundbridge, I take it that this is where you look? And it's still empty?

Hope this helps.

henrol · Post by **henrol** » 05 Nov 2007, 05:39

Hello,
I've played a bit more with this but still can't get the playlists to show up on the Soundbridge. I compared Johannes conf file to mine and except from the server name they looks to be the same. I've re-scanned, restarted, reset everything I can think of but the Sondbridge refuses to say anything else than 0 items found when I try to browse playlists.

Johannes, are you running the release version of the Bubba software (and/or Firefly) or are you using an "in-house" development version? I just can't understand why yours work and mine doesn't. It may be be the actual format of the playlist but I'd guess that the Soundbridge would atleast find the playlist if that was the case. Can you copy/paste a few lines of a playlist that works for you so that I can compare the format?

Thanks!

/Henrik.

johannes · Post by **johannes** » 05 Nov 2007, 17:26

Yes, that really is strange. I think soundbridge detects all playlists, even if they doesn't contain valid paths, since some of my playlists doesn't play anything.

I have PM:ed you a working playlist to look at.

Also, I am using the exact same 0.50.1 release you others are using, and my Soundbridge version is: 3.0.44.

That's all I can think of right now, but if you can't get it working please come back, I really wan't this to work since we want to turn this feature on by default in an upcoming release.