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Zarafa · Dec 9, 2004, 12:26 PM

Anyone have any experience using daapd as an iTunes server? In my particular case I'm looking to use it on FreeBSD, per these instructions, but I'm less concerned with the underlying OS and more interested in basic capabilities.

My home setup has an Airport Express networked (bridged) into my LAN, providing 802.11g/b service, and also hooked into my living room stereo. Works flawlessly, except that my primary music repository is currently a Windows XP box and to have it sharing out music, I have to be logged in with iTunes running (this also prevents anyone else from using iTunes on the same computer simultaneously, which is just silly). I'd rather have a true always-on 'service' so I could access the shared music from my laptop, Windows desktop, or any other attached computer without having to depend on a particular status on the desktop. I happen to have a FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE box that's a file server, DHCP server, firewall, proxy server, etc., and other than the fact that I'll have to add a larger hard drive, would seem to make an ideal iTunes server.

The things I'm most interested in knowing is if music I've purchased from the iTunes Store will work. Non-DRM stuff that I've burned from my CD collection, sure, but I'm unclear how the DRM protections of .m4p files will work in this scenario.

This is easy enough to set up and test, but if it's just obviously not going to work, I'd prefer to save myself the effort.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

macmike42 · Dec 9, 2004, 05:16 PM

Wow this is really amazing, thanks for bringing it to my attention, I've been looking for something just like this to supplant my "in-house" (heh) shoutcast stream. Unforuntately, it looks like it only supports MP3s. Fine by me as that's all I've got. However, the only way to know for sure is to give it shot. If you get to it before I do, please report back here.

FYI, website for the actuall daapd project is here

mhuie · Dec 9, 2004, 08:55 PM

Dunno if you've thought of this, but have you tried Remote Desktop? You might have to run Windows server as I dont think Remote Desktop in XP allows multiple sessions, that way you can control your music as well as have people using the machine.

Zarafa · Dec 10, 2004, 10:46 AM

Originally posted by macmike42:
Wow this is really amazing, thanks for bringing it to my attention, I've been looking for something just like this to supplant my "in-house" (heh) shoutcast stream. Unforuntately, it looks like it only supports MP3s. Fine by me as that's all I've got. However, the only way to know for sure is to give it shot. If you get to it before I do, please report back here.

FYI, website for the actuall daapd project is here

I actually took time to RTFC (C == changelog) at the daapd project home page and came across this entry dated 4/28/2008:

Added support for encoded AAC files: daapd streams .m4p files now, but the client has to be authorized to play them

This seems to answer my original questions. Seems daapd can stream .m4p, and it's the connected client that requires the authorization, rather than the server. Cool. Assuming I have a little time this weekend -- holiday parties and shopping are eating that up quickly -- I'll install daapd on my server and see what happens. I'll post results to this thread.

Zarafa · Dec 15, 2004, 05:57 PM

Just as an update, other than having a config issue caused by a typo on my part, this was a largely effortless installation, and seems to be working just fine.

I do have to get a larger hard drive now, since my FreeBSD box has very little room and can't actually store my music collection.

Note that daapd doesn't do everything I might want -- e.g. it doesn't support sharing of playlists, just of the whole library -- but there's a project called mt-daapd that looks to pick up where daapd leaves off. Looking forward to future development of both projects!

Samanoske · Dec 17, 2004, 09:25 AM

I found this hint quit useful to set it up on Fedora2, but it might be easily used to use for other distributions.

jasong · Dec 17, 2004, 10:44 AM

Before I go through and figure out how to install one of these two programs, if I have a server that has a logged in user all the time (using it as a ReplayTV server with DVArchive which needs to be running to work), is there any advantage to using daapd or mt-daapd over just having iTunes open on this machine as well?

The only drawbacks to using iTunes music sharing I have found is 1. I can't include the shared music in my playlists (which makes no sense since you can include iTMS previews in your playlists), and 2. I can't change ID3 info. Any solutions to either of these problems?

-- Jason