Share a folder from your Vortexbox

If you need some additional shares except the default ones (music, movies, pictures, files) just create them. Only a few steps need to be done, and it only takes a few minutes. Before making any changes to smb.conf backup the original one.

1. Add a new section to the smb.conf
   Connect to the vortexbox with SSH and open smb.conf with an editor.
   
   e.g:

   nano file /etc/samba/smb.conf

   
   
   add following section:

 ###### Share for temporary data sharing #########
[Sharename]
path = /home/trash
guest ok = yes
writeable = yes
# create mask = 0777


explaination:

[Sharename] - the name of the share, it can be different from the diretory name
path - path to the directory on OS layer
guest ok - everyone in the network can access the folder
writable - it's writable for everyone in the network
create mask - permissions for "owner", "group", "other" as typically on Linux OS. 777 means that all 3 groups have "read", "write", "execute" permissions. default value is 744. Note: in my example it is uncommented



2. Reload smb.conf and restart smb daemon



service smb reload
service smb restart

Youtube Plugin - Bad Youtube URL

Today I also recognized a problem with the youtube plugin. When you paste a URL to a youtube video it displays "Bad YouTube URL". It neither works when entering the original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zovedef1oIU nor when you try to add it like this youtube://zovedef1oIU

In the slimdevices forum other users allready posted the problem. I hope it will get fixed soon.

Thread can be found here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=87731&page=11

Upgrade to Vortexbox 2.0

Last week I updated my Vortexbox to the new Version (2.0). But I had some troubles.

At first I tried the direct update from fedora 14 to fedora 16 according to the tutorial. I updated to Logitech Media Server (LMS) 7.7.0, cleaned up the /boot directory, but after downloading the preupgrade file for fedora 16 there was still
not enough space on /boot although the partition size was 485 MB.

As I allready made a backup of my music library I decided to install VB 2.0 completely new from CD. This worked fine and only took 15-20 minutes. But after the first time booting the LMS 7.7.0 wasn't installed. So I had to install it manually.

 
yum clean
yum update
yum reinstall logitechmediaserver

Now everything seemed to work fine until I imported my music collection. LMS 7.7.0 has a problem with pictures stored in some mp3 tags. After some research in the VB forum I found a solution that seems to work up to now. It's the update to LMS 7.7.1 rc1. The official update to 7.1.1 should be available next week when I remember correctly.

Update (11. december 2011): After a restart of the VB I have the same problem as before upgrading to RC1.

I've found a solution now that works for me. After the VB booted, I have to stop vortexbox-player and Logitech media server (service still called squeezeboxserver). After that, start LMS again and vortexbox-player.

 
service vortexbox-player stop
service squeezeboxserver stop


service squeezeboxserver start 
service vortexbox-player start 

Log files / Navigating on Commandline

When you have problems with your system, you will need to have to search through the log files. Maybe you find the problem for you own, or have to search for help in a forum. In both cases it's necessary to study the log files. Usually the location of logfiles on Linux systems is /var/logs. Also on Fedora (Vortexbox).
Some useful log files are:

• When upgrading vortexbox, the logfile you see on the webinterface is located under:
  /var/log/vbupgrade.log
  
  
• Any loginfo of the Squeezebox server is stored in the sbs log-files. There are a couple of them located under:
  /var/log/squeezeboxserver
  These log files were very useful for me when I had the problem with the Youtube Plugin.
  
  
• If you configure a samba share, and the config file has an error, you can see the log in this file:
  /var/log/samba

 
This brings me to an idea for the next post. A short simple guide, how to add a samba share to your vortexbox.

If you need some help in Linux command line navigation, following links are helpful:
Edit files on command-line
Navigate through directories

Youtube Plugin - Settings

Because the Settings are hidden a little bit here an extra post. Just go to the SBS Settings - Advanced. In the left dropdown list select "Youtube". Here you can set that a video is always streamed to your box in the lowest resolution to save bandwidth.

Youtube Plugin on Squeezebox Server

In my opinion this is the best plugin for your Squeezebox Server. With the Youtube plugin you have a nearly infinite music collection. It's very simple to use and works great. You can search what every you want on Youtube. The Youtube songs are handled by the player like songs on your local HDD. So it is no problem to add Youtube songs to playlists (also mixed with local tracks).

The list for top rated, most popular and favorite music are queried from the youtube API.

• Top Rated Music - It should be equal to the filter "Most Liked" for "All time"
• Most Popular Music - Special Youtube algorithm
• Favorite Music -This feed contains videos most frequently flagged as favorite videos
• Youtube Search - Same output as the search on Youtube
• Music Search - Search on Youtube in the category music
• Channel Search - Searching in channels
• Playlist Search - Searching in playlists
• Recently Played - Songs you have recently played via the Youtube plugin
• Youtube URL - Add a direct Youtube URL

More infos can be found in the Youtube API: http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/developers_guide_protocol.html

The Youtube plugin streams the whole video but only plays the audio track. So you have to pay attention if you have some limitations on your Internet connection. But there is a setting that videos are streamed in low resolution.

Problems with the Youtube Plugin

I tried the Youtube Plugin in the version 0.12. With this version and the Squeezebox Server Version 7.6.0 - r32859 I had the problem that it was only possible to play 15 songs from youtube. After playing them allways an error was displayed:

problem: can't connect to server for <youtube://....>

After restarting I had the same problem again after 15 songs. I updated the plugin to version 0.13, but without success. It helped to update to the latest Squeezeobx Server Version 7.6.1 - r33149.