Try setting up another directory linking to ~/music and point mpd at that directory and see if that works. I had the same struggle with mpd at first and that worked for me. Mike -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 26 Nov 2010 22:57:26 Bob Williams wrote:

Hi Mike,

On Friday 26 Nov 2010 20:55:29 Michael Ayers wrote:

...

Try setting up another directory linking to ~/music and point mpd at that directory and see if that works.

I had the same struggle with mpd at first and that worked for me.

Mike

Do you mean

:~> mkdir mpdmusic :~> cd mpdmusic :~/mpdmusic> ln -s ~/music music

and then modify mpd.conf

music_directory "/home/bob/mpdmusic"

Bob

Still doesn't work :( Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 26 Nov 2010 23:32:35 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Bob Williams [11-26-10 18:15]:

...

Still doesn't work :(

Doesn't work? Not much to go on here... Care to give a few hints?

In the context of what has been said earlier in this thread, creating the symbolic link pointing to the ~/music directory, and then pointing mpd to that link instead of directly to ~/music, as suggested by Mike, produced the same result as pointing mpd to ~/music. That is, it failed to build the music database. Any further suggestions? Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 02:17:51 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Bob Williams [11-26-10 18:46]:

...

On Friday 26 Nov 2010 23:32:35 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Bob Williams [11-26-10 18:15]:

...

Still doesn't work :(

Doesn't work? Not much to go on here... Care to give a few hints?

In the context of what has been said earlier in this thread, creating the symbolic link pointing to the ~/music directory, and then pointing mpd to that link instead of directly to ~/music, as suggested by Mike, produced the same result as pointing mpd to ~/music. That is, it failed to build the music database.

Any further suggestions?

Failed in what context? How did it fail? How do you know that it did fail? What error message or ??

Try to explain what you would do if someone told you that their car failed to start. You would not have much to go on.

Sure, but I've already given a description of what I expect mpd to do, and what it's not doing, earlier in the thread. Namely, it should build a database of my music collection, which it is not doing, yet it appears to log the building of the database in its logfile. The following comes from the mpd logfile entry for today, after issuing :~> mpd --create-db: ----- Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Initializing interface Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Client changed to state 2 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Client is RUNNING Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Registering service _mpd._tcp/Music Player Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group changed to state 0 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group is UNCOMMITED Nov 27 10:43 : state_file: Saving state file Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group changed to state 1 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group is REGISTERING Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group changed to state 2 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service 'Music Player' successfully established. Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Shutting down interface Nov 27 10:44 : listen: listen_global_finish called Nov 27 10:44 : db_finish took 0.000000 seconds Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Initializing interface Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Client changed to state 2 Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Client is RUNNING Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Registering service _mpd._tcp/Music Player Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group changed to state 0 Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group is UNCOMMITED Nov 27 10:44 : update: spawned thread for update job id 1 Nov 27 10:44 : state_file: Saving state file Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group changed to state 1 Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group is REGISTERING Nov 27 10:44 : update: added classical/Debussy, Claude - 1980 Pascal Roge - Piano Music/08 Children's Corner -IV- The Snow is Dancing.flac ----- It states that it finished writing the database in zero seconds. It also claims to have added a .flac file. I have done a lot of research in various forums, and getting mpd to run successfully seems to boil down to having the correct entries in the configuration file, and making sure that the user it is running as has write and execute permissions in all the relevant directories. I have checked these numerous times, and cannot find anything wrong, but I'm also aware that I have probably overlooked some minor detail. That is why I posted details of my setup, to see if anyone here could spot something I've missed. If you need any more information to help me get this working, please say what I need to provide. Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 13:59:17 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Bob Williams [11-27-10 06:02]:

...

It states that it finished writing the database in zero seconds. It also claims to have added a .flac file.

is the database file written? I believe the ~/.mpdconf indicated the database should exist at /var/lib/mpd/mpd.db and my system did not have permission to write there so I changed it to ~/.mpd/mpd.db and it writes.

The path to my database file is the same as yours. Did you have to create an empty file at ~/.mpd.mpd.db or did the file get created by mpd in an empty directory? The relevant lines in my ~/.mpdconf are music_directory "/home/bob/mpdmusic" playlist_directory "/home/bob/.mpd/playlists" db_file "/home/bob/.mpd/mpd.db" #db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db" log_file "/home/bob/.mpd/mpd.log" #log_file "syslog" #pid_file "/home/bob/.mpd/pid" pid_file "/var/run/mpd/mpd.pid" state_file "/home/bob/.mpd/state" #state_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate" error_file "/home/bob/.mpd/mpd.error user "bob" bind_to_address "any" port "6600" log_level "verbose" gapless_mp3_playback "yes" save_absolute_paths_in_playlists "yes" metadata_to_use "artist,album,title,track,name,genre,date,composer,performer,disc" default_permissions "read,add,control,admin" Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 14:44:30 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Bob Williams [11-27-10 09:20]:

...

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 13:59:17 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

The path to my database file is the same as yours. Did you have to create an empty file at ~/.mpd.mpd.db or did the file get created by mpd in an empty directory?

it complained but created the file

...

The relevant lines in my ~/.mpdconf are

similar but diff for my user/system.

What permissions do you have on ~/.mpd/ ? -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Patrick Shanahan [11-27-10 10:15]:

* Bob Williams [11-27-10 10:05]:

...

What permissions do you have on ~/.mpd/ ?

drwxr-xr-x 2 pat users 4096 2010-11-27 10:11 .mpd

I tried mpc and: 10:37 wahoo:~/.gmpcX > mpc play 1 Yanni - Yani - The Rain Must Fall [playing] #1/1 0:00/7:24 (0%) volume: 84% repeat: off random: off single: off consume: off but there is not sound output. vlc works fine. -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sat, 27 Nov 2010, Bob Williams wrote:

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 15:13:32 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Bob Williams [11-27-10 10:05]:

...

What permissions do you have on ~/.mpd/ ?

drwxr-xr-x 2 pat users 4096 2010-11-27 10:11 .mpd

Interestingly, my permissions are more permissive, including write + execute for the group as well.

drwxrwxr-x 4 bob users 4096 2010-11-27 15:03 /home/bob/.mpd

This is because of advice seen in the various forums I've reviewed.

I don't _need_ mpd to work, as mplayer plays my music just fine, but it's extremely frustrating to find that something doesn't work, and not know why.

As my son says

"Frustrating. You know the computer is right and you're wrong of course (I have this experience everyday)."

Anyway, many thanks for your input, Patrick. I shall continue to worry at this problem until it or me gives up :)

Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

well, I remember reading that mpd needs write permission in all the directories it has to use. If I remember right, I had to do some fiddling to make it work too, and at the end I managed to make it work as user mpd and not as normal user. Also, I could not make pulse to work fine, and switched it of, could it be that? Also, my /var/lib/mpd has group set to audio, not users, but cannot remember if I did that or if it was default. Try running it as mpd and see what happens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 28 Nov 2010, Bob Williams wrote:

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 22:11:25 Georg wrote:

...

On Sat, 27 Nov 2010, Bob Williams wrote:

...

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 15:13:32 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Bob Williams [11-27-10 10:05]:

...

What permissions do you have on ~/.mpd/ ?

drwxr-xr-x 2 pat users 4096 2010-11-27 10:11 .mpd

Interestingly, my permissions are more permissive, including write + execute for the group as well.

drwxrwxr-x 4 bob users 4096 2010-11-27 15:03 /home/bob/.mpd

This is because of advice seen in the various forums I've reviewed.

I don't _need_ mpd to work, as mplayer plays my music just fine, but it's extremely frustrating to find that something doesn't work, and not know why.

As my son says

"Frustrating. You know the computer is right and you're wrong of course (I have this experience everyday)."

Anyway, many thanks for your input, Patrick. I shall continue to worry at this problem until it or me gives up :)

Bob

well, I remember reading that mpd needs write permission in all the directories it has to use. If I remember right, I had to do some fiddling to make it work too, and at the end I managed to make it work as user mpd and not as normal user. Also, I could not make pulse to work fine, and switched it of, could it be that? Also, my /var/lib/mpd has group set to audio, not users, but cannot remember if I did that or if it was default. Try running it as mpd and see what happens

I started running it as mpd:audio, and saving the database in /var/lib/mpd but switched to running as my username in my /home when the default way didn't work :(

of course, if your database is in /var/lib/mpd, the user mpd runs as needs write access to it. The default is that it runs as mpd and it uses /var/lib/mpd which is installed with the proper write permission. You could try to uninstall it, remove .mpd from you home directory, reinstall and restart with the default settings using /etc/mpd.conf. This is the setting I use, changing only the folder where the actual music is, so I can add new files easily. By the way, I use ncmpc, which I find a neat client. Don't give up.

Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 29 Nov 2010 01:51:20 Georg wrote:

of course, if your database is in /var/lib/mpd, the user mpd runs as needs write access to it. The default is that it runs as mpd and it uses /var/lib/mpd which is installed with the proper write permission. You could try to uninstall it, remove .mpd from you home directory, reinstall and restart with the default settings using /etc/mpd.conf. This is the setting I use, changing only the folder where the actual music is, so I can add new files easily. By the way, I use ncmpc, which I find a neat client. Don't give up.

Well, I eventually found that the problem was mpd won't write its database file if any of the files submitted for addition to the database are corrupt (for some definition of "corrupt" known only to mpd). So, I created a new directory ~/mpdmusic which I am populating with symlinks pointing to all the subdirectories under ~/music. As each symlink is created I update the mpd database. I expect it to barf when it reaches the file it didn't like when fed the whole of ~/music in one go. Oh yes, and of course I have set the path to music_directory in mpd.conf to ~/mpdmusic. Thanks to everyone who offered helpful suggestions, especially Georg's "Don't give up" :) Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 14:30:03 Georg wrote:

On Sat, 27 Nov 2010, Bob Williams wrote:

...

On Saturday 27 Nov 2010 02:17:51 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Bob Williams [11-26-10 18:46]:

...

On Friday 26 Nov 2010 23:32:35 Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Bob Williams [11-26-10 18:15]:

...

Still doesn't work :(

Doesn't work? Not much to go on here... Care to give a few hints?

In the context of what has been said earlier in this thread, creating the symbolic link pointing to the ~/music directory, and then pointing mpd to that link instead of directly to ~/music, as suggested by Mike, produced the same result as pointing mpd to ~/music. That is, it failed to build the music database.

Any further suggestions?

Failed in what context? How did it fail? How do you know that it did fail? What error message or ??

Try to explain what you would do if someone told you that their car failed to start. You would not have much to go on.

Sure, but I've already given a description of what I expect mpd to do, and what it's not doing, earlier in the thread. Namely, it should build a database of my music collection, which it is not doing, yet it appears to log the building of the database in its logfile.

The following comes from the mpd logfile entry for today, after issuing

:~> mpd --create-db: ----- Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Initializing interface Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Client changed to state 2 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Client is RUNNING Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Registering service _mpd._tcp/Music Player Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group changed to state 0 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group is UNCOMMITED Nov 27 10:43 : state_file: Saving state file Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group changed to state 1 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group is REGISTERING Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service group changed to state 2 Nov 27 10:43 : avahi: Service 'Music Player' successfully established. Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Shutting down interface Nov 27 10:44 : listen: listen_global_finish called Nov 27 10:44 : db_finish took 0.000000 seconds Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Initializing interface Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Client changed to state 2 Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Client is RUNNING Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Registering service _mpd._tcp/Music Player Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group changed to state 0 Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group is UNCOMMITED Nov 27 10:44 : update: spawned thread for update job id 1 Nov 27 10:44 : state_file: Saving state file Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group changed to state 1 Nov 27 10:44 : avahi: Service group is REGISTERING Nov 27 10:44 : update: added classical/Debussy, Claude - 1980 Pascal Roge - Piano Music/08 Children's Corner -IV- The Snow is Dancing.flac ----- It states that it finished writing the database in zero seconds. It also claims to have added a .flac file.

I have done a lot of research in various forums, and getting mpd to run successfully seems to boil down to having the correct entries in the configuration file, and making sure that the user it is running as has write and execute permissions in all the relevant directories. I have checked these numerous times, and cannot find anything wrong, but I'm also aware that I have probably overlooked some minor detail. That is why I posted details of my setup, to see if anyone here could spot something I've missed.

If you need any more information to help me get this working, please say what I need to provide.

Bob

what if you try to change "~/.mpd/database/mpd.db" to "~/.mpd/database" ?

Interesting suggestion, but unfortunately it made no difference. MPD still didn't write a database file, although it continued to add to its logfile *as if* it had been writing to the database. Besides, the default in /etc/mpd.conf is db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db" which makes me think it expects to find a file of that name. I created an empty file with the name mpd.db but it would not write to it. IOW it ignored my mpd.db file. Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 28 Nov 2010 14:58:14 Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

On Fri, 2010-11-26 at 15:18 +0000, Bob Williams wrote:

...

Hi Roger,

On Friday 26 Nov 2010 12:58:07 Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

On Fri, 2010-11-19 at 23:05 +0000, Bob Williams wrote:

...

Hi,

I'm trying to get mpd (Music Player Daemon) running locally. I've installed it from the packman repo, and edited the config file, but it refuses to write the music database, even though it does write to its logfile.

Here I thought you were a texture techie and MPD was Mean Profile Depth. And yes, I do that with Linux :)

Are you saying that you use Music Player Daemon successfully? I cannot get it to build its database, although it did manage it once on a subdirectory of my ~/music which only contains my classical music. Now I would like it to scan the whole of ~/music, but it stubbornly refuses :(

No. I was making a joke that I calculate Mean Profile Depth (an ISO texture measurement) on Linux. Sorry for the confusion.

:) Never mind. I've had an interesting conversation with Patrick and Georg. -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.3 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org