Saturday, December 27, 2008

Update the Media Center Part 2 (squeezecenter)

Second part of updating the in home media center is bringing back the trusty Squeezecenter (was slimserver) so that all the squeezeboxes in the home would work as before. This involved the steps documented here. I went with the testing branch which at the time of writing was 7.3.1. Note this does install a number of other components on your system including MySql which will require you to set a root password.

Once installed the slimdevices recognized the new server and needed firmware upgrades. There was also a small matter of configuration!, Squeezecenter exports a web interface on port 9000. This is where the initial configuration is down which is essentially wizard driven.


One of the main uses of the Squeezebox's in the home is to listen to BBC radio. Luckily some creative chaps have written a plugin called Alien BBC. The main dependency of Alien BBC is mplayer which is easily resolved with.

sudo apt-get install mplayer

With the dependancies out of the way the plugin can be downloaded, refer to the archive listed in the instructions

wget <archive>
tar -xvzf <archive>
sudo mv Plugins/Alien /usr/share/squeezecenter/Plugins
sudo chown -R squeezecenter:nogroup
/usr/share/squeezecenter/Plugins/Alien

finally restart squeezecenter

sudo /etc/init.d/squeezecenter restart

So now the functionality is back where it was when I started....onward and upward...








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