{Solved} How to get Amarok to play files over a network?

[ScottyK]

My notebook is dual booting 10.04 and Vista. I have another computer on my network(desktop-vista) that is running Vista, and is sharing all of my MP3s.

The notebook is successful in seeing the desktop, and can copy files from it.

I set up a shortcut in my home directory pointing to the shared music drive.

I can also get the URL for the shortcut "smb://desktop-vista/Music/"

Problem is where do I put this URL into Amarok so it can find the files??

I searched the forum here and found a threat talking about NFS. What exactly is that?

Thanks!!

[sithlord48]

Re: How to get Amarok to play files over a network?

hello scotty,
there is a very simple answer to your question. you can't really stream stuff over samba (by default) you will have to mount the folder first into your local file system you will want to research "smbfs" to learn how to do that. you will prolly want to set that in your /etc/fstab if you want auto mounting.

NFS is a file sharing system used in unix machines , you "export" a share from the server then you mount it on the client(s). when done correctly (by making your /etc/fstab mount them)

if you set either NFS or smbFS shares to mount in your /etc/fstab, on boot of the client you will have access to your files (assuming server is on) and your client will treat those files as if they are on the local machine. to the point where it will even keep the permissions for the files when served. this will allow you to very easily point amarok at the correct folder. (like mounting your music in ~/Music)

[ScottyK]

Re: How to get Amarok to play files over a network?

Cool thanks for the intel! Good to know I was trying to do something that can't be done the way I thought it could!

[ScottyK]

Re: {Solved} How to get Amarok to play files over a network?

I have successfully mounted the shared drive, so I thought I would post what I did to get it to work, so future forums readers searching this will have a place to start.

First I made sure I had the smbfs installed.

sudo apt-get install smbfs

In the /mnt directory I created a seperate directory called music, then I typed in the command to mount the share

sudo smbmount //desktop-vista/Music /mnt/music

Now the shared drive over on the Vista box is mounted in my file system. Just to confirm it, I opened up Dolphin and looked over at /mnt/music and there is the entire shared drive of music from the vista box!

Now this only works for this session. If I reboot the comptuer I would lose the mount point and would have to do it again.

So to get it to autoshare I had to add the following command to the /etc/fstab

Use the text editor of your choice, I used Kate. At the end of the fstab file, I added this line.

//desktop-vista/Music /mnt/music smbfs username=defaults,password=defaults 0 0

The shared drive on Vista is configured to not need a username/password behind the network. Add your credentials if you have your windows box setup to login.

Through trial and error I managed to get it to work. After a couple of reboots, the notebook is happily playing music over the network using the Amarok player.

Now the only thing left to figure out is to configure Amarok to not display all the music in the collection from the network when the notebook is not attached to the network.

[sithlord48]

Re: {Solved} How to get Amarok to play files over a network?

im glad to hear that worked for you.

Now the only thing left to figure out is to configure Amarok to not display all the music in the collection from the network when the notebook is not attached to the network.

i think that amarok makes an xml file for the "collection" so you would if im not mistaken have to remove that file every time your not on the network... either that or you can make you "collection" folder a local folder and use "files" instead of "local Collection" to find your songs. that way the files on the server won't be in your "collection" and that issue will just go away