Latest revision as of 23:47, 15 March 2009

Installation

Prepare LS and download Firefly files and libraries

Starting point:

Stock LS Live/Pro firmware opened for telnet access. At least fix the permissions for /dev/null

You need to download and save these packages onto your LS. There are a number of them required:

• Firefly
• flac libs
• mp3 tag libs
• ogg libs
• vorbis libs
• SQLite DB libs
• ogg format decoder

Save them all in the same folder for simplicity.

Telnet to LS and unpack the tarballs

Connect to your LS either with Putty (great for any serious linux use) or with the windows client (more than sufficient for this project). Hint: From the command window enter

     telnet <ip linkstation>

replace <ip linkstation> with the address of your Linkstation!! You are asked for a Login. Enter

     root

and then provide the password you set when opening the box in the previous step.

You should see something like the following:

     BUFFALO INC. LinkStation series HS-DHGL(JINMU)
     HS-DHGL90D login: root
     root@HS-DHGL90D:~#

Once connected, you are in the linux environment of the the LS. You are also connected as root (ie superuser). DON'T do anything you shouldn't!!!

Now we need to issue the commands to unpack the files we downloaded (tarballs). Assuming you saved in the default share folder (ie \\<your LS IP>\share), then type the following into the telnet session:

     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/mt-daapd-svn-1586_arm9.tar.gz

You should see a list of files getting unpacked. Now continue with the rest of the packages:

     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/flac-1.1.4_arm9.tgz
     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/libid3tag-0.15.1b_arm9.tgz
     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/libogg-1.1.3_arm9.tgz
     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/libvorbis-1.1.2_arm9.tgz
     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/sqlite-2.8.17_arm9.tgz
     tar -C / -xzvf /mnt/disk1/share/oggdec-1.0.1_arm9.tgz

Some libraries unpack more files than others. As long as you see something getting unpacked for each command, you should be good to go.

Configure

Tell Firefly where your mp3 reside

You may want to create a share on your LS specifically for your mp3. Use the web interface to do this. I did, and I called it mp3. I'll assume you've done the same.

So let's navigate to the folder containing the config file for Firefly (which is called mt-daapd.conf for legacy reasons). Enter

     cd /etc/mt-daapd

in your telnet session, then

     vi mt-daapd.conf

Now use the arrow keys to find the line that says

     mp3_dir = /mnt/disk1/<something or other>

In vi, the x key is delete, and the i key starts inserting text. It's easy once you get the hang of it :wink:. If you screw up, hit the escape button then enter ":q!". This will quit your editing session without saving anything. Once you are happy with your edits (your line should look like this)

     mp3_dir = /mnt/disk1/mp3

then hit escape and type ":wq" to save edits and quit the vi editor. (I remember once writing a couple of thousand lines of pascal code on an old unix machine with the vi editor. It is actually an incredibly powerful tool!!!)

Additional Changes for Terastation Live

If you have a very large set of music files, the default configuration settings may end up maxing out your / partition, which is a small 500M partition by default. Fortunately the default installation with the built-in mt-daapd helps out a little by providing a directory on the main array you can use.

Here's what the default partition structure looks like:

     # df
     Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
     /dev/md1                481.6M    448.5M     33.1M  93% /
     /dev/ram1                15.0M     92.0k     14.9M   1% /mnt/ram
     /dev/md0                281.0M     15.0M    265.9M   5% /boot
     /dev/md2                  1.4T    369.5G      1.0T  27% /mnt/array1

The / partition includes both the /usr and /var directories so gets filled up pretty quickly with the songs.db and log.

Change the log file location:

     #logfile = /var/log/mt-daapd.log
     logfile = /mnt/array1/mt-daapd/firefly.log

Change the database location:

     #db_parms = /usr/local/var/cache/mt-daapd
     db_parms = /mnt/array1/mt-daapd

Ensure your server can access the folder (it's default permissions are 700):

     chmod 777 /mnt/array1/mt-daapd

Warning! On the Terastation Live, each time you make any changes to any of the shares (adding new share, changing properties on existing share) the system kills the Firefly server. If anyone can figure out why this happens and how to fix it, I'd be very pleased!

However, the following changes (thanks to the people on the Firefly forums) will ensure that Firefly restarts

The /etc/init.d/firefly has an error that means that the restart parameter doesn't work. So change...

     restart)
       stop
       start
     ;;

to...

     restart)
       $0 stop
       $0 start
     ;;

You can also set the daemonwatcher to restart Firefly automatically if it stops by adding the following to /etc/daemonwatch.list:

     /var/run/mt-daapd.pid           /etc/init.d/firefly.sh restart 

Start Firefly

Assuming you have copied some of your mp3 to the newly created share on your LS, we are now ready to start Firefly.

     root@HS-DHGL90D:~# /etc/init.d/firefly start

     Starting DAAP daemon: mt-daapd

TADA!!!! All working. If not, sorry - maybe I made a mistake :oops: in these instructions.

You can control Firefly and add some smart playlists at http://<your LS IP>:3689.

• username: mt-daapd
• password is mt-daapd.

There is also a nifty little streaming app you can run from your browser at http://<your LS IP>:3689/applet.html

You should now be able to connect to your LS from itunes, your xbox/xbmc, your soundbridge, your squeezebox etc etc.

Make Firefly start on boot

Enter

     cp /etc/init.d/rcS /etc/init.d/rcS_old

This makes a copy of the rcS file before we modify/screw it up. Then enter(exactly as typed)

     echo "exec_sh firefly start" >> /etc/init.d/rcS

All done!!! Now enjoy

Configuring via web frontend

To enable configuration via the web-frontend, you need to change the permissions of the file /etc/mt-daapd/mt-daapd.conf (mt-daapd runs as user nobody in standard configuration) to be writable by the demon/webserver. Either, you can

    chmod o+w /etc/mt-daapd/mt-daapd.conf

or

    chown nobody /etc/mt-daapd/mt-daapd.conf

(there are many other ways to that - depends much on your personal taste...)

Then go to the frontend, http://<your LS IP>:3689

• user name: admin

initial password is (in standard configuration, to be changed in /etc/mt-daapd/mt-daapd.conf or - when enbling "Show advanced configuration" in the "configuration" page on the web-frontend)

• password: mt-daapd

On the start page, select "Start Full Scan" to add the files to the library. If you have iTunes and wish to add your smart playlists, you should also add your iTunes folder to the music files. Navigate to "configuration", select "add music folder" and enter the corresponnding path. Click "Save" to write the changes.

Credits

There is a comprehensive description for the Linkstation Pro taken from the forum by bawbagg:

This howto has borrowed huge chunks of text from forum user Jimbo's howto for Twonky. That thread can be found here. Many, many thanks to Jimbo for providing this. Without Jimbo's simple and easy to follow instructions for getting telnet running on an unmodified LS I would probably still be floundering around.

Many thanks also to kaiten - one of the developers on this site. He compiled the version of Firefly we are going to install, and provided the libraries that it requires.