SqueezeBox Server Issues

General discussion relating to the O2 Joggler, from the default O2 setup, to alternative operating systems and applications.
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roobarb!
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by roobarb! »

Jarv_77 wrote:No response from Christian just yet...
I hope Christian doesn't mind me speaking for him, but he's a bit busy with other commitments at the moment, so a little patience will be required before there are more tweaks to P'n'P.

In the meantime, I'm guessing that it should be fairly simple to delay startup of Squeezebox Server. This is a total guess (as I don't use SBS on the Joggler), but try having a look at /etc/init.d/rcS and see if there's a line referring to Squeezebox Server - if there is, put:

Code: Select all

sleep 20
On a line above it. That might delay it's launch long enough for the USB stick to be mounted. Or it may do absolutely nothing of any use. Worth a try, though.

My personal choice would be to run SBS on a different device, though. There are a few NAS devices out there that will run it if you don't fancy having a traditional server humming away - do some googling or check the Logitech Squeezebox forums for options if you're in the market. Then you can just have a quiet terabyte or two in a cupboard somewhere.
BirdsLikeWires - Get fresh builds of Debian Bullseye and Bookworm for OpenFrame with the latest 5.10 and 6.1 kernels! 8-)
holmes
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by holmes »

Hi,

I was planning to buy a Joggler and am worried by Regor's comment. Has someone really managed to run SBS on a Joggler with a significant music library (around 500 albums)? Does the Joggler really have (CPU + memory) the muscles to handle this ?

Thanks.
Regor
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Regor »

by holmes » Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:25 pm
Hi,

I was planning to buy a Joggler and am worried by Regor's comment. Has someone really managed to run SBS on a Joggler with a significant music library (around 500 albums)? Does the Joggler really have (CPU + memory) the muscles to handle this ?

Thanks.
Hi
An update on my post. I have now a test library consisting of 28 albums with 339 tracks in total on a 8Gb usb stick. Unfortunately there is no space left on the stick to extend the experiment.
The good news is that /dev/mmcblk0p4 is still showing 'use 79% '. The reason for this could be that a large amount of memory has already been allocated for data?
Unfortunately I do not have a usb drive available to extend the library to test memory limits at the moment.
The CPU has more than enough to cope with this task. I have a SheevaPlug with a much lower rated CPU and it copes easily. The drive attached to it however is formatted in NTFS not FAT32.
If there is not enough memory, Ubuntu on a usb drive could be used as an alternative but you would lose the use of the O2 apps.
Can any other forum user help out with info on music database size?
Regards
:)
xbmcnerds.com
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by xbmcnerds.com »

Yesterday i'v tried to modify the Line to stop "autoupdate" and to get rid of the USB-Mount-Problem.
It works. Thank you for the tip.

But now the whole Interface of the Webserver is gone.
I can still reach and use it over http, so it's not a big problem. In a way it's a feature. So no one can f*c* things up when trying to "play" with it.
(i'll build the joggler into something like a small jukebox -> http://www.xbmcnerds.com/index.php?page ... readID=923 (german topic)
Maybe i'll try to reinstall the whole squeezebox system.

Overnight i've tried to let the joggler play some random music from a usb stick. 10 albums or so. Just to find out if it will play-till-death.
Well ... death did come. This morning the screen was black and it didn't react furthermore (or is "anymore" the correct word?)
But after a reboot it worked again. Lucky me.

Next thing i'll try is to use a 15GB-USB-Stick (filled with music). Let's see, how the memory will go down or not.
Jarv_77
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Jarv_77 »

Mine is running squeezeserver and player with a 16gb Sandisk usb stick with approx 70 albums, most over 190kb\s or more.

The mod to prevent server starting early still seems to be working!
holmes
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by holmes »

Hi Jarv_77,

Did you try to run Squeezeplay and SBS for a long time to check whether it is reliable or not? Are the problems related to flash memory?
I wonder whether one can consider that SBS (and even Squeezeplay) on a Joggler is really usable or just barely experimental.
xbmcnerds.com
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by xbmcnerds.com »

I've tried it again with a bigger stick.
It crashed over night.

Next thing will be a complete flash of the joggler to start @zero.

If that doesn't work, i'll switch to linux-usb.
Jarv_77
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Jarv_77 »

holmes wrote:Hi Jarv_77,

Did you try to run Squeezeplay and SBS for a long time to check whether it is reliable or not?
No I haven't run it for a long period to test it. We still get crashes every now and again so I would not recommend it as a finished product yet...
xbmcnerds.com
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by xbmcnerds.com »

After a complete reflash i've installed the Player with "Pimp my Joggler".
I've connected the player to my NAS, which is running a SBS.
I've set it to play random tracks over night.
In the morning the system was freezed.

So ... i'll install ubuntu on a usb-harddisk and give the whole SBS another try.
I won't try it with another Flash-Based-Memory.
spoyser
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by spoyser »

Might not be related but my joggler was freezing quite often until I disabled the automatic dimming option via the PNP web interface.

Seems alot more stable now.

Might be worth a look.
Regor
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Regor »

Hi

I now have more information on the size of music library that can be catalogued on a joggler for the use of SqueezeServer. I attached a hard drive with a 32 Gb FAT32 partition. The partition was completely filled with mp3 tracks. These tracks were all correctly tagged and stored in album folders along with album artwork.
The library contained 353 albums with 5219 song tracks. The scan time for this library was just over 20 minutes. After the scan /dev/mmcblk0p4 showed 'use 85% ' . Extrapolating these figures would suggest that, I leave the sums to you, that there is sufficient memory for a lot more songs to be catalogued. Memory on the Joggler is not the limiting factor here, it is the 32 Gb FAT32 partition. Unfortunately, FAT32 partitions are limited to a 32 Gb maximum size.

To increase the size of the library further requires a more up to date filing system such as NTFS or ext3 which allow partitions larger than 32 Gb. Any suggestions as to how to get the Joggler to recognise these filing systems?

Recent posts in this thread have suggested that the combination of SqueezePlay and SqueezeServer on the joggler is unstable. My experience is that this is not the case.

Regards
:)
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roobarb!
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by roobarb! »

The Joggler should be able to read ext3 with no troubles by default... Not tried it, though.
BirdsLikeWires - Get fresh builds of Debian Bullseye and Bookworm for OpenFrame with the latest 5.10 and 6.1 kernels! 8-)
Regor
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Regor »

The Joggler should be able to read ext3 with no troubles by default... Not tried it, though.
Tried ext3 on mine and the drive was not recognised. Will try again!

Regards
:?
Regor
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Regor »

by roobarb! » Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:20 pm
The Joggler should be able to read ext3 with no troubles by default... Not tried it, though.
Hi

I have rechecked to see if a usb drive with ext3 format is recognised after a reboot and it is not. The joggler is looking for a FAT32 formatted drive.

I have attempted to rectify this by adding an additional line to /etc/fstab.
The line is:
/dev/sda1 /mnt ext3 defaults 0 0

Entering the command: mount /dev/sda1 and the drive is mounted and recognised.

I want to automate this process. My knowledge of Linux is sparse. Could some kind forum member please put me out my misery and advise how I could do this?

Regards
:cry:
holmes
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by holmes »

Hi,

I have installed the Ubuntu 10.10 image on a hard drive. I have a NTFS partition on the disk to contain my music collection (around 400 albums). I installed Squeezebox server from the Squeezebox site. I can play the music from both my Squeezebox Touch and the Joggler (Squeezeplay).
I have however the following problem when I play songs from a smart playlist (SQL + dynamic playlist plugin). On almost all the songs, once 2/3 of it has been played, I have a message stating that the FLAC file cannot be opened (the one that is being played). The message lasts only 1 second. Then I may have the following behaviour:
- the song is played up to the end,
- the covers of the next song appears, then 10 second later the new song is played while the previous one is not finished yet,
- sometimes the song stops and the following does not start.
Since this happens on both my Squeezebox Touch and Squeezeplay, I suspect the problem is related to the Squeezebox server. I do not know yet whether only the playlists are concerned or not. Has anyone already met this kind of problem?


Edit: The problem is not related to play lists. It occurs when I play all the songs of an album even without random option.

Thanks
holmes
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by holmes »

Hi,
My set-up is almost working: almost only. I use the Joggler as a SB server for my Squeezebox Touch. The network is PLC based.
As I described before for almost all the songs, I have a message displayed on the TOUCH (or SQUEEZEPLAY on the Joggler) stating that it can't open the currently played file. This occurs during the buffering of the next song. The message by itself is not a problem. What is really a problem is the fact that Playlist stops after a while (most of the time between the 10th and the 20th song).
I tried various set-ups:
- Ubuntu 10.10, Joli OS 1.2 on a EXT4 partition
- OS on a flash USB plug or a hard drive,
- Music collection (4000 FLAC files and some MP3) on a NTFS or EXT3 hard drive partition

It seems that the problem does not occur whith a small music collection (30 songs). I am not even sure about this.

Has anyone a fully working set-up? Has anyone any idea? I intend to make a test with the original OS but I do not expect any real improvement since it is very close to the others (UBUNTU based). Is there a way to install other OS (ex: FreeBSD) ?

Thanks,
Regor
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Regor »

Hi Holmes
I have not attempted to run Squeezebox Server using the Ubuntu image on a hard drive. I am, however, running the server on the Joggler's native OS. The set-up is stable and serves three squeezebox devices and Squeezeplay on the Joggler with no problems. The music library is in excess of 5000 mp3 and flac tracks which are on a FAT32 format USB drive.
If you are interested in trying this have a look at this site:
http://longpress.org/2010/11/05/squeeze ... -a-budget/
Since this article was written the squeezebox server version has been updated. I have it running with version 7.5.3 but this requires a small change to one of the server files. Suggest you try it out with version 7.5.1 as outlined in the article before you attempt a more up to date version.
I would also advise returning the joggler's OS to standard before you start and do not install Plug'n'Pimp as it has inherent stability issues. I know this will regarded as heresy by some but it is based on my experiences in getting a stable system.
Best of luck
;)
holmes
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Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by holmes »

Hi Regor,

It is good to know that some people are being successfull in using the Joggler as a SB server. Counting you, there are at least to reported success using a significantly large library. Besides there seems to be 2 working set-ups:
- Standard OS (your example),
- Ubuntu UNRE OS (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=87076).
I think I will try both. If I don't succeed it will mean my problem is elsewhere (network?).
Jarv_77
Posts: 92
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 9:55 am

Re: SqueezeBox Server Issues

Post by Jarv_77 »

Regor,

Good to hear you are having success with this, is it worth starting a new thread to discuss this install in its own right?

Out of interest what differentiates your method from plug n pimp?

Cheers
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