Subsonic Forum

A. Install SQUEEZE on dns -320
1. Download all necessary files:
How to: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q7TTJRUG
Squeeze: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5823T7NX
Putty: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgta ... nload.html
2. Copy fun_plug + fun_plug.tgz + fun_plug.debian + squeeze.tar.gz into Volume_1
3. Restart NAS
4. Install and run Putty with telnet connexion
Specify the destination you want to connect to:
Host name (or ip adress): 192.168.0.5 for example
Port 23
Connexion type Telnet
Click Open
5.
# cd /mnt/HD/HD_a2
# gunzip squeeze.tar.gz
# tar -xf squeeze.tar
6. Delete fun_plug and squeeze.tar and rename fun_plug.debian to fun_plug
7. restart NAS
8. Connect to ssh via putty
id : root
pass:dlink
#passwd for change password
9. update and upgrade distribution:
#aptitude update && aptitude upgrade

B. Install SUBSONIC
1. Connect to ssh via putty
2.
#aptitude install openjdk-6-jre
#cd /tmp
#wget 'http://sourceforge.net/projects/subsonic/files/subsonic/4.6/subsonic-4.6.deb' -O ./subsonic-4.6.deb
#dpkg -i subsonic-4.6.deb
#aptitude install lame flac faad vorbis-tools ffmpeg
#/etc/init.d/subsonic restart
3. add autostart
#nano /boot/linuxrc
and add this!:
/etc/init.d/subsonic restart
4.Subsonic is now installed,
nano /etc/default/subsonic for edit subsonic config
5. Verify subsonic is ok:
http://ip.server:4040 work!

Enjoy

I've been looking at a lot of small device solutions to move my subsonic installation. I'm curious how this is working for you so far and if the performance is good. I'm shopping for one of these right now! Cheers and thanks for the tutorial.

*addendum* purchased 2 WD 1.5TB Sata drives from Amazon for $100 each. Figured I'd start fresh with two identical drives. I've used a DNS-321 before and made a JBOD with two drives. Can you do that with this hack as well?

librainian wrote:I've been looking at a lot of small device solutions to move my subsonic installation. I'm curious how this is working for you so far and if the performance is good. I'm shopping for one of these right now! Cheers and thanks for the tutorial.

*addendum* purchased 2 WD 1.5TB Sata drives from Amazon for $100 each. Figured I'd start fresh with two identical drives. I've used a DNS-321 before and made a JBOD with two drives. Can you do that with this hack as well?

The DNS-320 only has 128 MB RAM, which may be a problem if you have a large music library. I have Subsonic running on a Sheevaplug (1.2 GHz ARM, 512 MB RAM), and it works well with a library of about 90,000 tracks. I had to increase the max memory allocation from 100 MB to 350 MB to get decent performance. With the standard 100 MB RAM, Subsonic was so slow as to be unusable.

@hanker: Hmm, the memory issue is obviously a concern. I just would love to have some small device instead of a PC running all the time. I've been messing around with Optware on a Asus WL-520GU router with a 1TB ext USB drive and it runs ok with only 16mb of RAM but of course you have that swap partition available on the drive. I was hoping 128mb of ram would be enough if I can get a swap partition working. I only have about 12,000 tracks right now so I'm nowhere near your number of tracks yet. It might work for a while until I can find another solution.

I've also been reading this thread http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1456 which describes poor performance as a common problem with Subsonic if the media files reside on a NAS samba share and Subsonic server runs on a windows PC, as my current install does. Since I already have the NAS device, I'm hoping that a local install of the subsonic server on the DNS-320 will avoid this performance problem. Anyone with some experience running subsonic directly on a NAS device who can share performance experiences would be appreciated as well. I'm currently researching other Samba tuning info.

librainian wrote:I've also been reading this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1456 which describes poor performance as a common problem with Subsonic if the media files reside on a NAS samba share and Subsonic server runs on a windows PC, as my current install does.

I know Sindre is aware of that problem and is looking into it.

From Sindre's TODO list

TODO IN 4.7
-----------------
Improve performance on network shares

However how successful he is we will have wait to find out - windows performance with samba shares seems to a global problem.

Well I followed the initial tutorial steps and I have subsonic running on the DNS-320. It will queue and play tracks etc pretty normally but its dog slow loading the home screen or config screens, about screen etc. Hopefully I can tune it and get it running acceptably. I'm trying to figure out where I can add a persistent mount of the second drive since that is where my music files are located. I thought placing the music collection on the second drive would help performance slightly.

This debian squeeze install has me a little confused. I did a manual mount command to get access to /Volume2/Music, but I'm not sure the best place to configure the mount command so that it loads in on restart. i am reading up on the mounting on "man (8) mount" but not sure which file controls this.

Anyway, it works... thanks for the step by step!

librainian wrote:Well I followed the initial tutorial steps and I have subsonic running on the DNS-320. It will queue and play tracks etc pretty normally but its dog slow loading the home screen or config screens, about screen etc

Are you using Sun Java? In my experience, that makes a big difference for these low-end machines with ARM processors. Subsonic on my Sheevaplug (1.2 GHz ARM, 512 MB RAM) was very slow with the open source Java, but it works much better with Sun Java. See this page for info on Sun Java Embedded:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/ ... index.html

It's free for personal use, but you may have to fill out a form.

Hanker, thanks for your reply.

I was simply following the tutorial as I am not strong on Linux. The instructions here are installing Java with this command

Code: Select all

#aptitude install openjdk-6-jre

which doesn't sound like Sun Java. Can I install both and test between them? I'd like to get this running somewhat smoothly before I spend more time moving my SSS database from my Win7 PC where it is currently installed. This may not even be possible given the different OS and file types but that was my next step. I am leaning towards a dedicated Nettop or some other low power device than trying to run this on my NAS but I am prepared experiment further before dropping another $200 or so on a dedicated device.

I downloaded this version of Sun Java. Think that's the right one...
ARMv6/7 Linux - Headless
http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/ejre/6u30-b12/ejre-1_6_0_30-fcs-b12-linux-arm-vfp-eabi-headless-10_nov_2011.tar.gz

Will have to search the other Linux tutorials here and figure out how to install it.

librainian wrote:I downloaded this version of Sun Java. Think that's the right one...
ARMv6/7 Linux - Headless
http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/ejre/6u30-b12/ejre-1_6_0_30-fcs-b12-linux-arm-vfp-eabi-headless-10_nov_2011.tar.gz

Will have to search the other Linux tutorials here and figure out how to install it.

The file I downloaded was described on the web page as "Java SE for Embedded 6 Update 21 (Build 9) ARMv5 Linux - Headless, EABI, Soft Float, Little-Endian ejre-1_6_0_21-fcs-b09-linux-arm-sflt-eabi-headless-27_sep_2010.tar.gz".

To install it I did the following:

I saved the downloaded file to /my_home_dir/. Then I did

Code: Select all

$ gunzip ejre-1_6_0_21-fcs-b09-linux-arm-sflt-eabi-headless-27_sep_2010.tar.gz
$ tar xvf ejre-1_6_0_21-fcs-b09-linux-arm-sflt-eabi-headless-27_sep_2010.tar


Now I have a directory

Code: Select all

/my_home_dir/ejre1.6.0_21


Your package name will be different, but you get the idea.

The next step is probably sub-optimal, but it's the only way I could get it to work. Basically I had to hard-code the path to the Sun Java executable by editing the file /usr/bin/subsonic like so:

Code: Select all

JAVA=java
if [ -e "${JAVA_HOME}" ]
    then
    JAVA=${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java
fi


becomes

Code: Select all

JAVA=/my_home_dir/ejre1.6.0_21/bin/java


Then do

Code: Select all

# service subsonic stop
# service subsonic start


With any luck you'll now have Subsonic running under Sun Java. Be patient - it may take a while for Subsonic to start. There's a chance that the DNS-320 will still be really slow because it only has 128 MB RAM. You'll have to redo the modification to /usr/bin/subsonic every time you install a new version of Subsonic.

Wow hanker, thanks very much for your detailed step by step. Very helpful indeed.

I am going to give this a try asap and report back my results. If I can't improve performance with this then I am moving on to trying an apple tv 1G install after I find a cheap one. At least I gave this a shot first!

Well I got it all working hanker, thanks for the additional info. The performance was still unacceptable for me despite my (relatively) small library. I moved on to a dedicated embedded device (AppleTV 1g) which works much better. The DNS-320 FFP/Squeeze/Subsonic install was relatively easy to setup and was good practice for another linux based device, but ultimately was not practical for a permanent Subsonic box.