TimBarnes

Voyage Linux on a small no-video computer is great. Music can be on a local disk or connected via your LAN. Control it from another computer or phone or tablet. Linux.voyage.hk is the website. Also see posts here by nyc_paramedic and others. Tim

Yup. I use google and opendns for DNA servers. Tim

Thanks for all the help. Here's what I've learned. Check the networking. In my case I had network connectivity, but not DNS service, so I could only play URLs that used IP addresses. This was fixed by adding a dns-servers entry to /etc/network/interfaces as shown above, and then restarting the network with ifdown eth0 and ifup eth0 ping is an easy way to check what is and is not working. [*]Get the stream URLs from the Internet - http://www.listenlive.eu/uk.html has a list of all the BBC stations. I saved the file behind each link, opened it in Textedit (any text editor will do), and copied the URL. Then from my main PC, ssh'ed into my mpd server, I used mpc clear and mpc add to load the stream. mpc play and mpc current let me check that the station is working (OK, I could just listen). [*]Make sure the playlist folder is writable. I made a folder /playlists and it was writable by root, but not by mpd. chmod a+w makes it writable by all, solving the problem. Load the radio stations that you want into your current playlist using a series of mpc add commands Save the playlist - I did it from mPod; it can also be done with mpc save Radio (call it what you like if 'Radio' doesn't suit) [*]Test everything. Use mpc load Radio to load the playlist mpc playlist will show you the stations loaded. I hope this is useful to someone going through the same issues. mpd is great, and it's nice to re-discover my ancient (more than 20 years ago) Unix instincts. Unfortunately the descriptions of the radio stations are still ugly URLs - I don't know if there's a way to fix that. I've tried adding #EXTINF tags to the playlist file (see the M3U Wikipedia page for more info), but it doesn't seem to have made a difference to what shows up in the playlist on mPod or via mpc. tim

I'm using a fixed IP address, to make it easier to find the machine via ssh. So it's probably something I'm getting wrong in the network configuration file. I just updated /etc/network/interfaces as follows: auto eth0 #iface eth0 inet dhcp iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.0.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 gateway 192.168.1.2 dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 and restarted the network connection. The entry in /etc/resolv.conf went away, but I still have name service, so I think I'm good to go. tim

The trick was to add a dns server in /etc/resolv.conf - the only entry was localhost. Once I had a proper dns server listed I could ping outside machines by name, and I can now play streams using names instead of IP addresses. I don't know yet why there was no dns server listed in /etc/resolv.conf - that' an exercise for another day. My next problem is to get playlist saving to work... tim

I'm making progress: I think it's a DNS problem. ping to the BBC URL fails. I ran the ping on another machine to get the IP address, and then substituted on my mpd machine. Here's what I got: root@voyage:~# mpc clear volume: 95% repeat: off random: off single: off consume: off root@voyage:~# mpc add 194.50.90.138:80 error: directory or file not found root@voyage:~# mpc add " http://194.50.90.138:80" root@voyage:~# mpc play http://194.50.90.138:80 [playing] #1/1 0:00/0:00 (0%) volume: 95% repeat: off random: off single: off consume: off root@voyage:~# mpc playlist BBC World Service English root@voyage:~# So I apologize for not figuring out the most basic stuff on my own...now I have to figure out why I don't have a working DNS server. Thanks again for jumping in to help. tim

Thanks - a silly mistake on my part. However I'm still getting errors: root@voyage:~# mpc clear volume: 95% repeat: off random: off single: off consume: off root@voyage:~# mpc add "mms://wmlive-nonacl.bbc.net.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio3/radio3_bb_live_int_ep1_sl0?BBC-UID=74ef8df21c2afb336cca614f212f676026cd3015b060c1e4e44f28c11c5a8cbd&SSO2-UID=" root@voyage:~# mpc play volume: 95% repeat: off random: off single: off consume: off ERROR: problems decoding "mms://wmlive-nonacl.bbc.net.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio3/radio3_bb_live_int_ep1_sl0?BBC-UID=74ef8df21c2afb336cca614f212f676026cd3015b060c1e4e44f28c11c5a8cbd&SSO2-UID=" root@voyage:~# I'm using the default buffer size - it's not set in my mpd.conf - but in any case the error is still there, and some streams do play (almost instantly), so I probably need to look elsewhere for the problem. tim

Thanks, Idolse. Here's what I get from mpd --version :- mpd (MPD: Music Player Daemon) 0.16.7 Copyright © 2003-2007 Warren Dukes <[email protected]> Copyright © 2008-2010 Max Kellermann <[email protected]> This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Supported decoders: [mad] mp3 mp2 [vorbis] ogg oga [oggflac] ogg oga [flac] flac [sndfile] wav aiff aif au snd paf iff svx sf voc w64 pvf xi htk caf sd2 [audiofile] wav au aiff aif [faad] aac [mpcdec] mpc [wavpack] wv [mikmod] amf dsm far gdm imf it med mod mtm s3m stm stx ult uni xm [ffmpeg] 16sv 3g2 3gp 4xm 8svx aa3 aac ac3 afc aif aifc aiff al alaw amr anim apc ape asf atrac au aud avi avm2 avs bap bfi c93 cak cin cmv cpk daud dct divx dts dv dvd dxa eac3 film flac flc fli fll flx flv g726 gsm gxf iss m1v m2v m2t m2ts m4a m4b m4v mad mj2 mjpeg mjpg mka mkv mlp mm mmf mov mp+ mp1 mp2 mp3 mp4 mpc mpeg mpg mpga mpp mpu mve mvi mxf nc nsv nut nuv oga ogm ogv ogx oma ogg omg psp pva qcp qt r3d ra ram rl2 rm rmvb roq rpl rvc shn smk snd sol son spx str swf tgi tgq tgv thp ts tsp tta xa xvid uv uv2 vb vid vob voc vp6 vmd wav wma wmv wsaud wsvga wv wve Supported outputs: shout null fifo pipe alsa ao oss pulse jack httpd recorder ffado Supported encoders: null vorbis lame wave flac Supported protocols: file:// http:// mms:// mmsh:// mmst:// mmsu:// gopher:// rtp:// rtsp:// rtmp:// rtmpt:// rtmps:// no message buffer overruns ...but I don't know enough yet. http:// streams could be anything - not necessarily an audio stream. I have been feeding mms:// labeled streams, but they don't work in many cases, so I must be missing something. The BBC streams are available as .pls files - here's one. [playlist] NumberOfEntries=2 File1=http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_intl_lc_radio3_p?s=1340418869&e=1340433269&h=7b77e6706b259290461b4ba23d9a0bde Title1=No Title Length1=-1 File2=http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_intl_lc_radio3_q?s=1340418869&e=1340433269&h=ececb95ef82db40dd97c3992a98e9c34 Title2=No Title Length2=-1 I've tried feeding these streams to mpd, and this is what I get: root@voyage:~# mpc clear volume: 95% repeat: off random: off single: off consume: off root@voyage:~# mpc add "http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_intl_lc_radio3_p?s=1340418869&e=1340433269&h=7b77e6706b259290461b4ba23d9a0bde" root@voyage:~# mpd play Failed to open play: No such file or directory no message buffer overruns root@voyage:~# The last.fm streams seem to work (the ones I've tried), but they don't do any interesting classical music, and they don't offer the BBC. I'll keep on reading...and trying... Thanks, tim

More specifically, how do I figure out what stream types mpd understands, and how do I figure out what kind of stream a radio source is publishing? Some stations work; some don't and I don't know why. The mpd man pages don't seem to answer the question. Tim

Does anyone have a good guide to getting Internet radio streaming going on mpd? I have the Internet Radio MPC app for my iPhone, but some of the stations don't work, and the ones I really care about (BBC Radio 3 & 4) I haven't been able to get to work. I'm using Voyage MPD on a decrepit laptop with an ODAC, and loving the sound. Thanks, Tim

I keep my music on my main Mac, which is locally backed up to a separate drive with Time Machine. The whole machine is backed up offsite with Backblaze. Unlimited capacity for $5 / month. The music is NFS-mounted to a small machine running Voyage mpd and an oDac. I control it from my phone. So one master copy of the music shared to the household, double backed up and played by a dedicated computer and dac under remote control. It works really well. Tim

I'll try a few things. I have a different laptop also running mpd I can try. It has a 2 pin plug (iBook). The current laptop is a very old (2004) travel mate. There's also a bit of audible digital hash - so I suspect the laptop. Tim

I'm enjoying my new odac. It's fed from an old laptop running mpd. Music is on the LAN. Lovely smooth top end. I like it better than my Naim CD player. There's a bit of hum which I'm still tracking down. The plan is to replace the laptop with an Alix / Voyage mpd server. Tim