Icecast amaroK script 0.5 review

Icecast amaroK script is an Icecast/Darkice script for amaroK. Functions: - It sends the title of the song being played to an

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 30K Developer: Sylvain Henry

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Icecast amaroK script is an Icecast/Darkice script for amaroK.

Functions:

- It sends the title of the song being played to an Icecast server.
- It can start your Icecast server and Darkice on amaroK starting
- It allows you to stream what you are listening to in amaroK (in fact everything you are listening to!!!).

Utilisateurs francophones, regardez le tutoriel http://www.trustonme.net/didactels/341.html

Requirements:
perl
perl-URI module
iconv
wget
darkice
icecast2

Installation and configuration:

1) Script installation

Use the script manager in amaroK and choose "Install a script" and select "icecast.amarokscript.tar".

2) Install and configure Icecast

Icecast is the stream server. If you already have an Icecast server running, skip this part.

First you need to install Icecast. Depending on your distribution, you may use some binaries (through apt-get, urpmi...) or sources (http://www.icecast.org/). Be sure you install the version 2 of Icecast.

If you want to customize Icecast, edit the icecast.xml file. See Icecast documentation.
By default, Icecast listens to port 8000, user is "admin" and passwords are set to "azerty". It is assumed that Icecast is installed in /usr/share/icecast/ and log directory is /tmp.

3) Install and configure Darkice

Darkice will grab the sound from your sound card device and send it to Icecast. If you already have Darkice running (or don't want to use it), skip this part.

First you need to install Darkice. Use binaries (apt-get, urpmi...) or sources (http://darkice.sourceforge.net/).

Now, you have to edit darkice.cfg. In the [Input] section, you have to choose a device. If you are using OSS, device will look like "/dev/sound/dsp". If you are using Alsa, "device" will look like "plughw:0,1" where the first number is the number of the sound card and the second number is the number of the device. Personally, I have one integrated sound card and one Sound Blaster live and I have to set "device" to "plughw:0,2" to capture the sound from the SBLive.

Then you can choose the sample rate. In most case, it should be set to 44100 (best quality). You may also change the bitrate and the quality in [icecast2-0] section. You have to set server, port and password accordingly to your Icecast configuration.

The "mountPoint" option in the [icecast2-0] allows you to choose the "file" which will "contain" the stream. For instance, if you set "mountPoint" to "music.ogg", clients will have to connect their players to "http://server:port/music.ogg".

You can give a name to your stream with the "name" option and a description with the well-named "description" option in the [icecast2-0] section.

Read the Darkice documentation for an advanced configuration.

4) Configure the plugin

Now that your Icecast server and Darkice are configured, you have to configure the script itself. Edit the config.sh file and set "user", "passwd", "server", "serverPort" and "mountPoint" accordingly to your Icecast and Darkice configuration files. If you chose to launch Icecast and/or Darkice by yourselves, set "icecastManagement" and/or "darkiceManagement" to "no".

You may choose to run Darkice as root as recommended by the documentation. In order to do that, set darkiceRoot to "yes". Root password will be asked on script initialization.

You can choose how the title of the song being played will appear on the client by modifying the "str" option. When no song is being played, the string "emptyStr" will be sent. For these two options, don't forget to escape the special characters (the same way you do in a shell). For instance, it can be "str=$title - $artist ($album $totalTime)".

5) Launch the script

In amaroK, launch the script in the script manager. If the configuration is correct, you may go to the next part, else you have to check the steps above.

6) Connecting a client

Clients have to connect their music players (amaroK, vlc...) to your server accordingly to your configuration. For instance, with the default configurations files, they have to open "http://server_ip:8000/music.ogg" where server_ip is the IP of the computer running the Icecast server. You can get it with the "ifconfig" command (you must log in as root).

The client has to support Ogg Vorbis streaming. It is possible to configure Icecast to send MP3 but MP3 is not a free codec and is too old. You should prefer Ogg Vorbis.

What's New in This Release:
Correct handling of title sending when no song is being played (default title is now "amaroK's radio").