mserv - music server

mserv [c -c <config_path>c ] [c -p <port>c ] [c -r <mserv_root>c ] [c -vc ]

mserv is a music server for playing mp3s to a group of people via one sound device.

mserv listens on port 4444 and awaits connections from known users listed in the acl file.

The user 'root' is normally special in that it can perform some operations, such as renaming tracks, adding other users, etc., that other users cannot.

The manual for users is available via the web on http://www.mserv.org/

-v

Verbose mode. Shows track and album filenames as they are read, and also prints all log activity.

-r <mserv_root_path>

Specifies where to root mserv's files. Default is '.mserv' in your home directory, and if this directory does not exist it is populated automagically.

-c <config_path>

Specifies the path to the configuration file to use. By default this is the file 'config' in the mserv root directory (see -r).

-p <port>

The port that the server listens on for connections. Default is 4444.

Mserv plays music using the player specified in the config file. One of the players that mserv can use is the 'mservplay' program which is a wrapper for mpg123 designed to increase the 'nice' priority. The program must be setuid root, although it is not enabled by default for security reasons. Mservplay is only useful for low-powered processors such as pentium 100s or less.

A perl program that opens up your editor (environment variable EDITOR) with a list of all the files in the directory. This allows you to edit the track names/authors/dates without the effort required to do this online. Note that the music server will notice when an on-disk track information file is altered and will re-load the information - to force this use the 'SYNC' mserv command. Run this program in the directory containing all the '.trk' files (see comments in the mservedit file).

~/.mserv/tracks/

The directory holding all the music files (e.g. '.mp3's).

~/.mserv/trackinfo/

The directory holding all the track information files ('.trk's and 'album' files).

~/.mserv/log

The log file that mserv outputs.

~/.mserv/acl

The access control list.

~/.mserv/webacl

A standard Apache-style password file of colon separated <user>:<password> lines where the password is unix crypted. This is derived from the acl file.

~/.mserv/config

The configuration file - see comments within.

~/.mserv/player.out

The current track's player output (e.g. from mpg123 indirectly from mservplay).

/usr/bin/mservedit

Allows you to edit the track files (see MSERVEDIT section above).

Written and designed by:

James Ponder <james@squish.net>

Contributors:

Joseph Heenan <joseph@ping.demon.co.uk> who wrote the mp3info code to calculate how long a track is and pull out the ID3 tag information, and who provided many ideas and testing.

Thanks to:

Jonathan Hunt <xlcus@toth.org.uk> for helpful ideas and testing

Michael Hipp <Michael.Hipp@student.uni-tuebingen.de> for writing mpg123 that this program (usually) uses to play tracks

Monty <xiphmont@mit.edu> for writing cdparanoia (a great ripper)

mservcmd(1), mservcli(3), mpg123(1), cdparanoia(1), bladeenc(1), l3enc/mp3enc(?)

http://www.mserv.org/