Playing and looping audio cds from command line

barker1977 · 08-29-2008, 02:21 AM

Hi All,

At work we'd like to be able to play an audio cd in our server and use it as the hold music for our phones.

Our server has no sound card so we need to play audio cds and plug the phone input into the headphone socket on the cd drive.

I've been able to play cds using this method with no problems (using cdtools for example).

The problem is we'd like to have the cd repeat (cdtools gets to the end and stops). I've googled and can't seem to find any software that will let me play audio cds on repeat from the command prompt. We don't have the server hooked up to a monitor/keyboard an usually just connect using putty. I know I can probably setup x11 forwarding and use some pretty gui, but i'd like to be able to control the app from the command line so I can setup cronjobs to turn it off/on for business hours only.

I know I can probly set up some crons to play the cd from the start every 1/2 hour, but its not very elegant.

Any ideas on what I could use? Anything I'm not thinking of that will be easier?

BTW, its a debian server on 2.6.18-4-686-bigmem kernel. We've also got a few red hat ES4 (2.6.9-67.0.15.EL) vms running on it as well so I can use one of those if need be.

Thanks

jomen · 08-29-2008, 03:40 AM

Wouldn't it be easier to rip the CD to mp3 or ogg or some format that can be played back using any command-line player (mpg123, mplayer, play...)
and script the playback so it starts over once it is finished?
while true play...?

[edit]
I somehow missed the point :/
A cheap mp3-player in loop-mode perhaps instaed of the CD-drive?
If you can start the playback via software/command-line the loop should be scriptable with the CD-drive too.

jschiwal · 08-29-2008, 03:57 AM

Why not get a real cd player and run in in loop mode? CD access can cause problems, especially if the CD develops a problem. Some admins even unplug the CD drive on the servers so someone doesn't leave in a disk.

arizonagroovejet · 08-29-2008, 04:09 AM

Use a simple wrapper script that runs the command that plays the CD and then calls itself?

Code:

#!bin/bash
command_to_play_cd arguments
exec $0

This assumes of course that command_to_play_cd does not exit until it has finished playing the CD.

Though if I were you I'd forget playing the CD entirely and do as jomen suggests and rip what you want to play to mp3 or whatever.

jschiwal · 08-30-2008, 08:41 AM

The server doesn't have a sound card, so he can't play mp3's on the server. However, having a cd running on a server isn't a very good idea IMHO. I would suggest getting a cheap mp3 player and have it play a playlist in loop mode. I picked up an ugly Craig mp3 player in a drug store for $30.

You don't want the server to stop working because a CD disc is going bad. If a hard disk is on the same controller card, the perfomance may suffer even if the CD is OK.

barker1977 · 08-31-2008, 06:02 PM

I hadn't thought about the cd drive causing problems/ performance issues. Getting a cheap mp3 player might be a better option.

Cheers for the advice.