Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Alternatives to Jinzora (Ampache and Subsonic)

UPDATE: The instructions below regarding Subsonic are for Hardy. For Intrepid, these instructions stay the same except for the following: Install tomcat6 instead of tomcat5.5. Then substitute tomcat6 wherever you see tomcat5.5 in the following instructions. Also substitute port 8080 anywhere you see port 8180.

I have found a couple alternatives to Jinzora that I think I actually like better. The reason is mostly the interface. The first is Ampache. This one is simple because you install it from the repositories (just type sudo apt-get install ampache). Then go to the site (http://yourserverip/ampache).

The second, and possibly my favorite, is Subsonic. There is a great howto here. But in case it ever gets lost, here it is again (instructions are for Hardy):
1. Download Subsonic (war version) from here and unzip the subsonic.war file.
2. Install tomcat5.5, java-jre, and java-jdk with the following:
sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5 sun-java-jre sun-java-jdk
3. Modify init for tomcat with the following:
sudo nano /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5
Find where it says TOMCAT_SECURITY=yes and change it to no.
4. Restart tomcat with:
sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 restart
5. Move that subsonic.war file that you previously unzipped to /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps with:
sudo mv /current/location/of/subsonic.war /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/
6. Make a subsonic directory with:
sudo mkdir /var/subsonic
7. Then change the ownership of that folder with:
sudo chown tomcat55:nogroup /var/subsonic
8. Open up port 8180 if you have a firewall.
9. Reboot your computer
10. Try it out by going to:
http://yourcomputerip:8180/subsonic
11. You will initially login with "admin" as both your ID and password. Once at the site, you can change the password, add users, and add music.

Sources:
Subsonic
Subsonic Installation Howto