In order for my server to function as an iTunes server for my home network I required a suitable piece of software, a quick search revealed that the Firefly Media Server looked like a suitable candidate, with its ability to run on Linux, BSDs, Solaris, embedded devices and Windows, though if I’d probably go for Windows Home Server in the latter case.
Installation
For installation on Fedora 8 the only pre-requisite is libid3tag, which is used for ID3 tag reading. As this is part of the Fedora 8 core repository you can install it using yum.
[root@server]# yum install libid3tag.i386 libid3tag-devel.i386
Once this is done it’s time to install Firefly itself, which is available from the Fedora 8 updates-testing. In order to use this you’ll have to first edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates-testing.repo and enable it, by simply changing the [updates-testing] enabled=0 to enabled=1.
[updates-testing]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - Test Updates
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/$releasever/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-testing-f/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test
Then you can install the Firefly Media Server using yum.
[root@server]# yum install mt-daapd
Now we need to edit the configuration file which can be found at /etc/mt-daapd.config the changes I made were:
[root@server]# vi /etc/mt-daapd.configadmin_pw = myPassword # password to access the web configmp3_dir = /media/music # path to your mp3 directorypassword = mp3 # the password you'll need to enter into iTunes
You now need to give write permission on /var/cache/mt-daapd and /etc/mt-daapd.conf, the former being where your playlist is stored and the latter to enable you to edit the config file from the web interface.
[root@server]# chmod 777 /var/cache/mt-daapd[root@server]# chmod 777 /etc/mt-daapd.conf
Yes I know using 777 is a tad lazy, but this took me a while to get it all working. I’ll fix it later, no honest I really will…
Now before we start the mt-daapd service, I’ll remind you that you’ll need to have put at least one mp3 file into your mp3 directory and give the directory the appropriate rights. You’ll also need to open port 3689 on any/ all your internal firewalls!
To start the server you simply…
[root@server]# cd /etc/init.d[root@server]# ./mt-daapd start
… and if you’ve ticked Edit -> Preferences -> Sharing -> Look for shared libraries in iTunes you should find Firefly svn-1696 on server under SHARED in the iTunes window.
Notes:I installed all the software as root, so you may have to make additional changes to your configuration file if you use another user.
I currently seem to have to restart the mt-daapd service to get new songs to show in the iTunes playlist, this doesn’t seem quite right and is something I’ll research a bit more.
Oh! you can access the web config at http://localhost:3698 and the log file at /var/log/mt-daapd.log
Editing needed, but so is sleep…
Thanks a lot, helped me with my college work study.