Revision as of 16:48, 31 December 2006

Background

Hardware/Software Requirements

• Any Roku soundbridge device (M500, M1000, M1001, M2000)
• Any Linkstation w/ OpenLink or FreeLink installed on it
• A wired or wireless (b or g standard) network - some Roku devices are WEP & WPA compatible
• regular computer w/ web browser & terminal/command line interface program

Directory setup

On the share/data partition (hda3 usually) of your Linkstation, it is a good idea to set up some sort of directory structure for organizing your music files. Here is one possible example:

/share/freelinktunes/e_Music
/share/freelinktunes/i_Tunes
/share/freelinktunes/hpodderdownloads
/share/freelinktunes/mediarippertunes
/share/freelinktunes/lossless
/share/freelinktunes/internet_streams

Managing these files is easy if you have flexible access to them with Samba or NFS.

Firefly/mt-daapd Tweaks

Making Firefly's web interface configuration page "configurable"

If you notice that your Configuration page on the web interface (available by web browser at <linkstation-ip>:3689/config.html) won't allow you to make changes, then you may need to adjust permissions on the configuration file. The very first entry on the Configuration page lists the location of this file, usually at /etc/mt-daapd.conf . To make the web configuration work, cd to the directory where this configuration file is and modify the permissions of the file:

cd /etc
chown nobody mt-daapd.conf 
chmod 600 mt-daapd.conf 
 

Reload the web Configuration page and it should work now. This is a method suggested by an expert at Firefly Forums. If you have concerns about security, you may want to read this thread for details on keeping it secure.

Automatically refresh the database

Playlists

Static Playlists

Smart Playlists

URL/Internet/Stream Playlists

hpodder

Hpodder is a podcatcher that is available as a Debian package, so it is a natural choice for those running Freelink. At the time this article was written, it is available in testing and instable, so remember to (temporarily) adjust your /etc/apt/sources.list as needed - that is, you must have either the testing or unstable branch of Debian enabled.

Once you install hpodder, check its man page. It gives details on configuring it and the first run of hpodder.

You will have to declare a download directory for hpodder (like /share/freelinktunes/hpodderdownloads) , as listed above in Directory setup.

One nice implementation would be to run hpodder as a daily or periodic cron job.

Customizing the Roku

References