Hey guys;
I've been searching round but havent found any info on anyone considering this, so forgive me if it is covered somewhere that I couldnt find.

Is there a way with hijack or some other software to share the playlists as a filesystem. I know that the playlists can re-use the same file, which is effectively the same as a hard link.

This would mean that my linux box could mount the playlist structure and I could easily file browse the structures.

Is there are reason this hasnt been done yet? It only needs to be read only, as I understand that handling copying new files in etc would be a bit trickyer (tho maybe not impossible). Is NFS/SMB too bulky for the empeg?

The problem that I am trying to combat is this: XMMS has lesser handling ofr HTTP mp3 streams - it cant skip thru the song via the duration slider, and I can't drag and drop the stream links on to the xmms playlist from firefox - in windows/winamp I can do both, making playlist building (in winamp) easy.

If the files were on my local file system XMMS would handle both these. Anyone got any suggestions on how they achieve these tasks in Linux?

The music stored on the empeg disks has been renamed so unless you knew that file 4af0 was the track you were looking for then it'd be pointless mounting it. Nothing to stop you from compiling NFS or CIFS apart from maybe memory constraints.

yes, im aware that mounting the files directly would be no use; I was hopnig for a translation layer that emulated the playlist file structure over smb/nfs

Ah okay. Just checking

You could do it with a Samba VFS module which would display a more friendly view of the empeg HD. Somebody wrote one which converts FLAC/etc to WAV for his Audiotron so that might be something to take a look at.

But then he doesn't get playlists-that-look-like-folders-on-a-samba-share. I think that's what he was asking for.

MMmm.. I suppose.

Perhaps some aspiring kernel hacker might code up a "playlist" filesystem for the empeg, then.. Pretty easy to do, and a good learning exercise.

Cheers

Ok sounds like there are most of the components out there, just need someone to glue it together. Can you mount a filesystem via FTP? I realise that this would still only show the FIDs etc, but interestedin how this is done in general

So what app do you linux geeks use to stream music to, if not xmms? any recommendatnios on better mp3 players for linux? specifically I'd like to be able to drag the stream links onto a players playlist to be able to coibble party playlists as drunkards ask for tracks. I don't know if the shortfall in dragging is to do with gnome or if its just xmms that needs to handle a dropped item - Im still getting my head around hte nix windowing model.

Decided that I'd spent enough time on windows and so switched to ubuntu - still learning the nooks 'n crannies

Your PC linux box just needs the "FTP filesystem" support built into the kernel (I think it's an optional component -- google it).

There is another piece of software around here somewhere that creates a "symlink farm" on the player, basically linking fids to their track/playlist titles. This could be run on the player first, and then the FTP mount will give a nice browseable tree.

Cheers

FWIW, ftpfs (part of lufs; http://lufs.sf.net I think) is quirky at best, at least in my experience. For getting one or two files from point A to point B it's okay, but I'd imagine it'd fall over and die when trying to pretend to be a real browesable filesystem. It also didn't seem to be updated very recently last time I looked closely at it.

Hmm this sounds like a reasonable way to achieve it: I could mount the structure, then create the symlink farm thnngy on my local system (for performance - is this a reasonable assumption?)

Obviously i'd need to FTP mount to the same place every time, and would need to run a periodic symlink rebuild, but that sounds do-able!

I'll let ya'll know if I get it going and if it is useable, thanks guys.

Mp3tofid creates a symlink farm, but not on the player,
it creates it on the PC.

Then, you copy the links, dereferencing them, to the
player (best with rsync).

But there is a simple way to get the original file structure
back on the player, if you use mp3tofid. mp3tofid adds a
custom tag to each fid that contains the original location
of the tune or playlist. This is used for synchronisation
purposes, but can also be used to recreate the original
structure using hard or soft links, using a simple shell
script.

You could do that on the player, but I do that on a backup
I keep of my fids on a PC at work.

I also made a small CGI proggie that shows and streams
all tunes and playlists from a fid tree backup.

Pim

And what does it take to get NFS going? MLord, does it need to be compiled into the kernel, and if so is it too be worthwhile? I can setup the FTP fs but expect NFS to be better?

For NFS, you just need to reconfigure/recompile the empeg kernel (aka. "Hijack"). Full source code is at the Hijack link above.

But the real problem is that adding NFS server support to the kernel will chew up another 100KB or more of kernel memory. On a Mk2a unit running v2final (as opposed to a Mk2 unit, or running v3alpha), that should be fine.

Cheers

great - so who wants to volunteer an NFS enabled kernel? MLord, Im hinting towards you otherwise I need to either setup the empeg kernel compile environment, or patch my kernel for the FTP mount tool to work

Here, try this one. I was do a kernel build anyway. That is hijack 423 with NFSd enabled. No other changes.

-Mike

Your a star! Haven't tried it, so its pre-emptive praise, but I have full confidence

Sorry for my slow response; I have uploaded this kernel and created a /etc/exports file. What else might I need to do to get nfs to mount?

toolman@toolpc:~ $ s mount -t nfs 192.168.1.56:/ grill/
mount: RPC: Remote system error - Connection refused
toolman@toolpc:~ $

Portmap? IIRC an NFS-serving kernel still needs a userland portmap.

Peter

hmm yes I read this on the NFS faq. Anyone care to comment on how one might get portmap going on the empeg?

I figured out that this process wont work anyway, I wanted to create a symlink folder structure from the fids, but I think the mp3tofids does it the other way around

Yes, mp3tofid works the other way around, but it stores the original location of the tune in a custom tag. So if you your player is filled using mp3tofid/rsync, you can use a simple script that create a symlink tree from fids to human-readable filenames.

Pim