Ho to install Mpd on an existing Debian installation on Raspberry Pi

Well, this tutorial simply follow what I did in order to create RaspyFi, on the Moebius Linux Distribution. But it can work on other Debian distros as well, please note that this tutorial is specifically tailored to the Pi.

First update:

apt-get update
apt-get updgrade

Y, then Y again

When updating process is over:

reboot

Let’s disable Ipv6, that Raspberry Pi

Just add this line at the end of l file /etc/hosts

::1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Now we can install mpd

apt-get install mpd

Y

On the Pi it usually gives some error messages, we can safely ignore them.

reboot

Le’ts create our playlist folder:

mkdir -p ~/.mpd/playlists

Now let’s edit our mpd.conf file:

nano /etc/mpd.conf
And modify the string:

bind_to_address “localhost”

in

bind_to_address “127.0.0.1″

Ctrl + x ,then Y.

If we want to store our music library on a usb storage:

Let’s see how Debian calls our drive: (formatted in fat32):

fdisk -l

Specifically for me: /dev/sda1

Let’s create the  Music folder and chmod it :

mkdir /media/Music
chmod -R 777 /media/Music
mount /dev/sda1 /media/Music

Modify the fstab file with our partitions :

nano /etc/fstab
just add this line:

/dev/sda1 /media/Music vfat defaults 0 0

Ctrl+x then Y

Let’s check if everything is ok:

mount -a

If we don’t get any error message, we’re ready to go.

reboot

If we want to use a nas as storage (SAMBA)

Install samba client

apt-get install smbclient

Creating  mount directory:

mkdir /mnt/nas
chmod 777 /mnt/nas

Mount the nas

mount -w -t cifs -o username=,password= //192.168.1.nasip/sharename /mnt/nas
If you’ve protected your share with password, insert them. If none password or user has been set, just leave this field empty

Check with:

ls /mnt/nas

If everything is ok, you should see your directories.

Let’s set the automount

nano /etc/fstab

Add this line in the end

//192.168.1.ipnas/sharename /mnt/nas cifs username=,password= 0 0

Check with:

mount -a

If no error appears, again, we’re ready to go

reboot

Ok, last entries in our configuration file:

nano /etc/mpd.conf

Let’s tell mpd where our music is stored:

Usb storage:

music_directory “/media”

Nas storage:
music_directory “/mnt/nas”

If you have a usb dac, let’s tell mpd to use this instead of the shitty analog out:

audio_output {
type “alsa”
name “USB Dac”
device “hw:1,0″ # optional
format “44100:16:2″ # optional
mixer_device “default” # optional
# mixer_control “PCM” # optional
# mixer_index “0″ # optional

These options can be quite different depending how debian calls your dac, but i always used that with different usb dacs and it always worked. You can try by changing in 1,0 instead of 0,1 but this is up to you. As you can see, I din’t changed everything from resampling to buffer size etc etc. This will be done in future tweaking tutorials. Anyway the quality of music reproduction with these settings is pretty awesome, so expect some minor improvements with further tweakings.

Some examples:

If you wish to enable audio buffering (and so ram reading). Uncomment these strings.

#audio_buffer_size “2048″
#buffer_before_play “10%”

If you want to send the audio stream directly to the usb dac, bypassing any software\hardware mixer. Change the string

mixer_device “default”

in

mixer_device “none”

ctrl+ x e Y

reboot

Now You should choose a client in order to control your mpd box. The best available is GMPC for Windows\Linux. Pretty simple and straightforwarding (sometimes it freezes, hope this will get solved) you can find it here. Then you can use Mpdroid or Mpod to control mpd via smartphone. These 2 clients are really good and goodlooking.

Happy music, folks!