New User - with Sonos

[RATTY]

Hi

I've just become a premium user as it got round the sonos 65k limit. My set up is:

PC with ubuntu
Various Sonos pieces of kit
Synology Diskstation DS413J

Got it set up on my PC and sonos

Any idea how I can install subsonic onto the synology - assuming its possible


Cheers

Ratty

[Michael Bech Hansen]

Hi Ratty,

This thread holds a lot of info about running Subsonic on a Synology NAS:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15343&hilit=synology

I'm running Subsonic on a DS1512+ myself, using Apache Tomcat and the Subsonic "WAR" installer.
The most tricky part of that setup is making Tomcat+Subsonic play nice with the Synology's builtin webserver (my additions to the Apache config is listed in the mentioned thread).

/Michael.

[RATTY]

Michael

Thanks for the reply the information looks good. I’m not that confident in the steps to take but will have a go when I have a free day and some support from my boy.

Cheers

John

[RATTY]

Hi

Thought I'd have a go at this but the JAVA and Tomcat package don't seem to be available on my diskstation. Googling looks like my NAS is too low spec?

Model DS413j
CPU MARVELL Kirkwood 88F6282
cores 1
memory 512K

If this is the case is there a NAS out there that has subsonic as an optional package?

If I need to upgrade my NAS any recommendations?

Cheers

John

[Michael Bech Hansen]

Hi,

As far as I know, there is no NAS where Subsonic is a supported package from the NAS vendor.
For Synology, there is a 3rd party package, available from a non-Synology package source - here is the package sources I have setup:
http://www.cphub.net/
http://packages.pcloadletter.co.uk
http://packages.synocommunity.com
(I don't remember which one has the Subsonic package)

Last time I looked, the Subsonic package was v4.8 - i.e. Ancient, and you'll miss out on good features, possibly also Sonos integration (don't remember when that was added).
Unless the third party Subsonic package has started getting updates, I wouldn't go that route myself...

Recently a guy posted about a Docker-image for subsonic in these forums (I think it was in the "Mods, Apps and Clients" section).
The Docker-solution probably requires a reasonably high-end NAS,
and is also dependent on the maintainer of the Docker-image for updates.

As I wrote, I'm using the Tomcat+WAR installer on Subsonic.
I have been quite happy with it: it only depends on the Tomcat package which Synology maintains, and the WAR package which comes directly from Subsonic.org.
Upgrading Subsonic is easy with this setup:
- Stop the Subsonic service in the Tomcat manager
- Undeploy subsonic from Tomcat manager
- Deploy new subsonic WAR package.
- Start the Subsonic service.
- Rebooting the NAS seems necessary though.

As for which NAS to buy... I can say my experience with Synology has been good.
If you go for a Synology, getting one with an Intel-based processor will be best (but not cheapest).
Many 3rd party packages, and also Synology packages, are only supported on Intel-based systems.
If you are going to use transcoding for Subsonic on the NAS, getting a 2 or 4-core Atom-based CPU is recommended.
Depending on the number of simultaneous users/transcodings, you may need to go higher CPU-wise.
For a smaller setup (family+a few friends, a 2-core Atom-based system works fine for me).
I'm not aware if transcending will be necessary for the Sonos integration.

Hope this helps a bit

Michael.