I am fresh into linux. I have spent hours trying to find a goo mp3 server software. My goal is to have all my music on my NAS, use my old Pentium 3 to play that music to my wireless speakers. I want to control this from any computer/droid etc web browser. I have tried amarok and banshee to no avail. rhythmbox sounded like the best option with rhythmweb. I can get the plugin to show up in rhythmbox (select/unselect) but cannot get any browser to display as it seems so many others can. i have tried name-desktop.local:8000 along with the ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8000. What gives? Does anyone else run a server like I want? Please help. I do like linux but in my searching I found winamp has wawi that may work. I don't want to stream only control. I might install windows instead but would like to tough out this linux trial. thanks for any help!

I've had good luck with a couple of things. Icecast was one of the first things I used, but after a bit I found that Ampache fit my needs a lot better. The downside to Ampache is that you do have to run a web server, buit that isn't a big deal on most Linux distros. On the upside, it works nicely over a web browser, it has an Android client (Amdroid) which means I can access my mp3 collection from my car, and it works well with Amarok.

I'm running my Ampache setup on a Pentium 4 along with a lot of other things, so if your not bogging it down with a ton of other stuff, a Pentium 3 should be able to serve out music pretty well.

firefly is a nice media server it uses the mt-daap protocol so it's itunes compatible

ampache I'll try that out. Is it difficult to set up? But that sounds exactly what I want. So pretty much it could stream to my droid and/or control my playlist to my speakers? The later is all I really want. I'm going to shove this p3 away and just have it access my mp3s on the NAS and ship it out to my speakers which have their own amp. Thanks all anymore suggestions would be sweet.

Ampache is pretty easy to set up, but you need a web server that can handle PHP and you'll need MySQL running. Most of the big-name distros will do this out of the box, but with a P3, you might be looking at some of the cut-down distros and then you may have to pay attention. What distro(s) are you considering?

Oh, by the way, if you're looking at accessing Ampache from outside your LAN, you'll probably want to look into getting a domain name. I use one from no-ip.org, but there are several other free or low-cost services that work without all the hassle of going for a full-blown domain.

I set up ampache don't know how it worked but it did. It seems that it downloads the file to the local machine... I want to play/control the file on the host. I can now access my music anywhere which is cool but I want to change songs etc remotely but it seem ampache does this in reverse, can play files anywhere. Is there another option?

also it didn't load all my music stopped at 2000 songs... it may still be figuring things out we'll see it's a pentium 3

I set up an MP3 streaming box once a long while back with gnump3d. I was happy with it.

EDIT: Sorry, gnump3d streams to a remote computer and won't play on the server itself (at least not that I'm aware of). XBMC below will play on the XBMC server. XBMC was also (originally) developed to run on the original XBox hardware. So I think a P3 should have the horsepower to run it reasonably well.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/

When I first used it, it was a collection of Perl scripts. It had a small number of config options (port, users and passwords, etc.). So it was easy and quick to get running. It provided a simple web interface that gave a theme-based directory listing of your library. You could stream individual songs or kick off a playlist. I never had a problem with it.

It's been a while, so some things may have changed since my experience with it.

I've started messing with XBMC recently:

http://xbmc.org/

Depending on your long-term plans, XBMC may be worth looking into. Also, there is an XBMC remote control app (free) for Android based phones.

I'm not entirely sure what you're after here. The files do have to be sent to the client since that is what is connected to the audio system.


Sorry, maybe I'm just being thick tonight, but what do you mean by "change songs remotely?" Aren't you changing things using whatever interface you have at hand?

Yeah, give it a bit. As far as I know there isn't a file limit.

Thank you again for any help with people like you out there linux would be dead to me. I'm surprised I've made it this far. Ok I have all my mp3s on a NAS and can access them via my ps3. This computer will always be on and is connected to speakers for my house. Currently I need to attach a monitor can change songs. I want to be able to change songs from any computer that way I can have this computer sitting in a corner. Like an IR remote changes the channel I want to be able to play and change music remotely. Now with ampache I can download or stream to any computer, I almost want this in reverse, control the source playlist from anywhere and add songs as I wish. Maybe ampache can do this but I canot initiate play without downloading the m3u file. I want to be on my windows desktop/laptop/or droid and play/select song to play on the house speakers which are attached to the p3. Does that make sense? I tried rhythmweb for rhythmbox and thought this may help but never was able to access xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8000 (p3:8000) and I port forwarded my router to my p3. Thanks

MPD sounds like what you want.

http://www.musicpd.org/

It also has web clients, and you can route the output through Icecast if you want.

when I search you tube videos of mpd THAT IS EXACTLY what I want! But still haven't found a way to set it up. It looks so highly customizable that I have no idea where to begin. did everything in this tutorial:
http://tuxtraining.com/2009/01/30/se...nd-mpc-locally

and when I open sonata nothing is inside. any ways to set this up?

Ah, I get it now. Yeah, you're right that you do have to send the m3u to Ampache to get this to happen. Dugan is right, mpd is a good choice.

Lets start by checking if mpd is actually running on your server. Do you see mpd in the ps -A output? If you look at the netstat -pane | grep LISTENING output, is mpd there on the port you set? Also take a look in the mpd.error file you set up and see if there are any clues. Finally, do you have a firewall in place?

Well, you edit the configuration file to tell mpd where your media is, and then you build the database with mpd --create-db, and then you need to start mpd. Then clients can connect to it.

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Configuration

And if you decide you don't like Sonata, you can try this client. Not that I have any reason to be biased towards it or anything:

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~dugan/quetzalcoatl.html

well again almost there... installed mpd set up my /etc/mpd.conf and changed all the permisions which was tough but figured out terminal could do it. now no matter what port I run I get this message:

listen: bind to 127.0.0.1:xxxx failed: Address already in use (continuing anyway, because at least one address is bound)

wtf? this is after I made sure mpd was stopped by mpd --kill then followed with mpd --create-db. No luck. Any suggestions?