Snakeoil OS

A DIY digital music streamer with exceptional performance

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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by markiteight »

tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-09 17:30 Where SnakeOil comes in is making it easier to set up something like in the image above, without the need to understand what you are doing (joke ;) but you will still need a media server, such as MinimServer, and a control point such as Bubble or Kazoo (or Hi-Fi Cast?). If you are using the Hakai player built from the build instructions on this forum, then it should have upmpdcli, which is the renderer, and MPD client which is the player part. That would mean you are just missing the media server on your NAS... Based on 'Motty's post above, that's where SnakeOil should help you with setting up MinimServer. Have you clicked on Music Library in the SnakeOil interface? Under that, there's the Music Servers section to enable MinimServer. (see the last image in the first post on this thread)
Once again, Token to the rescue!

I've ditched OMV (for now) in favor of giving Snakeoil a go. It seems better in every respect.

Missing the server was exactly my problem. I just didn't know how to go about resolving that. Turns out it's really, really easy in Snakeoil...at least the full version. Under the Snakeoil tab is a list of software packages. Tick the box next to Minimserver (I'm not sure if this is available in the free version, but if you want to mount more than one drive in your NAS you need the full version anyway) and let it do its thing.

I'm guessing I'll need to do the same with upmpdcli (or whatever it's called...can we just call it Word Salad?) on HAKAI and then I'll have UPnP capability. HAKAI is already configured to use MPDv.21 and USB audio. Anything else I'm missing?
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by FairPlayMotty »

R SO mp.jpg
That's how your Snakeoil OS Player tab should look on your Hakai Server.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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FairPlayMotty wrote: 2019-03-09 22:49 R SO mp.jpg

That's how your Snakeoil OS Player tab should look on your Hakai Server.
Really? If it's just a NAS, not a one box server/player, do I need to enable a music client and specify the output device? If so that runs counter to Snakeoil's own instructions.

If I have Minimserver selected and try to enable a client I get this:

Image

with no further option to select a client. I have to pick one of the MPD servers in order for the client choices to be revealed.

If I click on the yellow "minimserver" in the top right of the screen it brings up a page that asks me to, "enter the full path to your new content directory in the field below and click Update." This is where being a relative novice becomes extremely frustrating. Complying with those instructions should be very straight forward, but nowhere am I informed what the "full path" is, nor am I informed where I might find that information. It's just one of those things that's assumed I know.

On the bright side, Kazoo now acknowledges the presence of the NAS. That's a HUGE step forward. However it's still stuck at "Waiting for room..."
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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Take a step back - what are you trying to achieve: on what device are you trying to play the music from your NAS? It'd help if you describe your current system, and what's on them by way of operating system & music software if they're computers / computer based devices.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by markiteight »

IT WORKS!!!

Beth Orton never sounded so sweet!

The final piece of the puzzle was to be found in HAKAI. I had activated upmpdcli under Music Servers. Once I disabled Music Servers, enabled Music Clients, and selected upmpdcli, Kazoo woke up and luscious, glorious music issued forth.

Thanks many to everyone for all your help, especially Tokenbrit, Sopper, FairPlayMonty, Lego, and of course Fredrik. I hope other novices can learn from these trials, otherwise I wasted a lot of forum space!
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by FairPlayMotty »

Enjoy the Beth Orton!
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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Yay! Congrats :)
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 00:08 Take a step back - what are you trying to achieve: on what device are you trying to play the music from your NAS? It'd help if you describe your current system, and what's on them by way of operating system & music software if they're computers / computer based devices.
Yeah...that would help, wouldn't it? ;-)

Storage/server:
HAKAI based, GA-N3160N-D3V, 3x Intel 320 (1x300GB partitioned into 1 20G boot and 1 270G storage, 2x 600GB storage) configured thusly:
Image

operating the latest SnakeoilOS (1.1.3) unlocked:
Image

Renderer/Player:
HAKAI as above but with a single 300GB Intel 320 running unlocked SnakeoilOS 1.1.3:
Image

Image

Switch: Netgear GS108Tv.200
WiFi Router: Apple Airport Extreme
Control Point: Linn Kazoo

New problem (that didn't take long!):
Now that it's working it's time to transfer all my music to the NAS. Problem is when I mount the NAS to my mac it only recognizes the 20GB Boot/OS partition, which obviously causes a complaint when I try to drop my 800+GB Music folder into it.
I'm mounting using

Code: Select all

cifs://<NAS_IP_Address>
which brings up a dialog box asking for a username/password to log in as Registered User, or no user/pw to log in as guest. It auto-fills the username box with a name I'm not using, and no password works. Even the user/pw I specified when installing Snakeoil doesn't work. So I choose "Guest" and proceed.
It next brings up a window asking me to choose "Music" or "Playlists". I choose "Music". It then brings up this:
Image
(Ignore the file "Unknown". That's the Beth Orton album I was using as a test.) No matter what directory I choose it only recognizes 17GB available out of 20. Even though it sees sda5, sdb1, and sdc1, it doesn't see the ~1.5TB of available drive space.

Ideas?
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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Logically, you could do that one of 2 ways: a) on the Macbook, copy your music to the Hakai storage server; b) on the Hakai storage server, copy the music from the Macbook. It seems like you're trying option a)

Looking at 'Motty's screenshots, I don't see a way to share the music disk partitions via the SnakeOil screens, but there is something on the SnakeOil website. If you scroll down to the section Copying Files Over Network, you'll see a description of using SnakeOil as a NAS. Assuming this option is enabled, as mentioned, then the next step is to pick the music share. Maybe all you need to do is change the mount code on your Macbook to:

Code: Select all

cifs://<NAS_IP_Address>/music
Can you try that & report back?

Ideally you would be better using NFS, rather than CIFS, to copy the music, but I'm not sure how you'd do that yet... Try CIFS to the music share, as above, first and copy a few albums to keep Beth company if you can, then we can see about getting it working with NFS instead ;)
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 02:44 Logically, you could do that one of 2 ways: a) on the Macbook, copy your music to the Hakai storage server; b) on the Hakai storage server, copy the music from the Macbook. It seems like you're trying option a)

Looking at 'Motty's screenshots, I don't see a way to share the music disk partitions via the SnakeOil screens, but there is something on the SnakeOil website. If you scroll down to the section Copying Files Over Network, you'll see a description of using SnakeOil as a NAS. Assuming this option is enabled, as mentioned, then the next step is to pick the music share. Maybe all you need to do is change the mount code on your Macbook to:

Code: Select all

cifs://<NAS_IP_Address>/music
Can you try that & report back?
Yes I tried that, and all other possible mountable directories, with the same result.
Ideally you would be better using NFS, rather than CIFS, to copy the music, but I'm not sure how you'd do that yet... Try CIFS to the music share, as above, first and copy a few albums to keep Beth company if you can, then we can see about getting it working with NFS instead ;)
Yeah that would be ideal, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that. It appears in order to select and successfully mount using NFS in Snakeoil you need to first format the drives during the installation process with a format that is NFS friendly. I don't know what that is, so I went with a known quantity (EXT4) just to get it working. I'll worry about optimizing it later.

The reason I'm using CIFS is merely because there is a bug in OSX's implementation of SMB2 that makes it unusable with Windows (and apparently Linux) machines. The simple work around is to mount using CIFS. It probably isn't ideal but it works and that 70mb file that took ~5+ minutes to transfer using NFS on OMV took about 20 seconds with the current setup.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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The website said you need to enable SnakeOil as a NAS - did you do that?

Stick with CIFS for now, but EXT4 should be NFS compatible - it was for me when I initiated an NFS (client) mount to my old music share & pulled copies of albums from the ReadyNAS to my new Linux (Hakai-ish) NAS.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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From your screenshot it does seem to see the drives but no space (Zero bytes) on those drives... Separately, the screenshot shows the folder structure > media > music, but music is not expanded - is there any Size listed under music?

Have you tried the following:

Code: Select all

cifs://<NAS_IP_Address>/media/music
Otherwise I'm stumped at the mo' - 'Motty may know the snake oil needed to copy music to SnakeOil (as a NAS)
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 03:45 The website said you need to enable SnakeOil as a NAS - did you do that?
I'm not sure what that means. As far as I am aware there is nothing like a switch or button to enable NAS in Snakeoil. It simply acts as a NAS when configured as such (enable Music Server, don't enable Music Client).
tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 03:45 Stick with CIFS for now, but EXT4 should be NFS compatible - it was for me when I initiated an NFS (client) mount to my old music share & pulled copies of albums from the ReadyNAS to my new Linux (Hakai-ish) NAS.
It is? I remember reading somewhere that EXT4 was not NFS compatible, but that's a foggy memory. I'll have to do some digging to find the statement I'm thinking about.
tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 04:05 From your screenshot it does seem to see the drives but no space (Zero bytes) on those drives... Separately, the screenshot shows the folder structure > media > music, but music is not expanded - is there any Size listed under music?
I think the Size category refers to the amount of space the data in that file takes up, not the available space, so if the files are empty (as they currently are) it would show 0 bytes.
The "expand" arrow is there whether there is something to expand to or not. In the case of the Music file, there's nothing there.
tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 04:05 Have you tried the following:

Code: Select all

cifs://<NAS_IP_Address>/media/music
Yeah. No bueno.
tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 04:05 Otherwise I'm stumped at the mo' - 'Motty may know the snake oil needed to copy music to SnakeOil (as a NAS)
Thanks for your help. I'll keep digging as I have time. Fingers crossed I find something.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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markiteight wrote: 2019-03-10 04:42 I'm not sure what that means. As far as I am aware there is nothing like a switch or button to enable NAS in Snakeoil. It simply acts as a NAS when configured as such (enable Music Server, don't enable Music Client).
I think it's just this, under Setup System Services:
"SMB Windows File Sharing: This is the file sharing protocol you used for copying files to your Snakeoil machine over the network. Turn this service off when you don't use this feature. Turn it on again when you need to copy more files over."
You want it checked [✓] Presumably it is, otherwise you wouldn't have got as far as the Music and Playlists options...
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-10 05:28 You want it checked [✓] Presumably it is, otherwise you wouldn't have got as far as the Music and Playlists options...
Ah I see what you mean. Yes, it's checked by default.

Image

Anything else here that jumps out at you?
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by FairPlayMotty »

You're in Apple territory which is alien to me.

A couple of observations. Snakeoil OS has a drive mount type of CIFS yet your music drives are mounted as EXT4. Agent Kith is pretty logical, there's probably a good reason why the mount type of CIFS exists. You may want to try mounting the drives as CIFS if that's the path you want to go down. The other point is Agent Kith supports this software and is very helpful indeed in my experience - drop Kith a mail please.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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Agent Kith is awaiting a forum account activation but dropped me an email to address the issue faced by markiteight as follows:

That is a known issue with how samba calculates disk space. e.g. if the mount is like so:

sda1:/media/music
sdb1:/media/music/disk_1
sdc1:/media/music/disk_2

When you look at the free space of /media/music (and any folders under it, e.g. disk_1 or disk_2). It will be the freespace of sda1 (and not sda1+sdb1+sdc1).
The only workaround is to mount sdb1 as /media/music, copy the files over, then mount sdbc1 as /media/music, and copy the files over. Then when everything is done, re-mount it.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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FairPlayMotty wrote: 2019-03-10 12:26 Agent Kith is awaiting a forum account activation but dropped me an email to address the issue faced by markiteight as follows:

That is a known issue with how samba calculates disk space. e.g. if the mount is like so:

sda1:/media/music
sdb1:/media/music/disk_1
sdc1:/media/music/disk_2

When you look at the free space of /media/music (and any folders under it, e.g. disk_1 or disk_2). It will be the freespace of sda1 (and not sda1+sdb1+sdc1).
The only workaround is to mount sdb1 as /media/music, copy the files over, then mount sdbc1 as /media/music, and copy the files over. Then when everything is done, re-mount it.
Huge thanks for uncovering that! I will give it a try.

Unless I'm missing something there is no way to edit/change a mount from within Snakeoil, only add. Changing a mount requires the Ubiquity partitioner software that is part of the installation software, which requires reinstalling Snakeoil. Is this indeed the case or have I overlooked something?

Not a big deal, just more of a kerfuffle than is ideal.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by David Neel »

Well, another day lost to this frustrating Hakai project...

Totally failed to get Snakeoil working. But currently enjoying digital via my ADS/3 and LSNAS.

And there I shall remain....
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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FairPlayMotty wrote: 2019-03-10 12:26 Agent Kith is awaiting a forum account activation but dropped me an email to address the issue faced by markiteight as follows:

That is a known issue with how samba calculates disk space. e.g. if the mount is like so:

sda1:/media/music
sdb1:/media/music/disk_1
sdc1:/media/music/disk_2

When you look at the free space of /media/music (and any folders under it, e.g. disk_1 or disk_2). It will be the freespace of sda1 (and not sda1+sdb1+sdc1).
The only workaround is to mount sdb1 as /media/music, copy the files over, then mount sdbc1 as /media/music, and copy the files over. Then when everything is done, re-mount it.
Whelp...that didn't work. It's still doing the same thing.
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by tokenbrit »

Can you try it the other way round: share from OSX, and CIFS mount to the music share on your laptop from SnakeOil? Hopefully SnakeOil then gives you an explorer to copy (pull) from laptop using the SnakeOil NAS onto one of your 600GB Intel 320 media/music SSDs...

Alternatively, which drive is Beth on? Pick one of the other media/music drives then reformat (& mount) it under SnakeOil - unmount the rest (except the OS drive ;) and try again... I recall you mentioned something that OMV allowed you to do: combine the music volumes into one logical 1.5TB space - wondering whether that's left any weirdness to the filesystem on those drives. Otherwise it's beyond me as I don't have SnakeOil to try, and don't know OSX... Maybe e-mail Agent Kith for ideas?
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by FairPlayMotty »

I've changed mounts in the system. You can delete a mount and remount it. There's also a reset button in the Mount Points Configuration section.

The thing that surprised me a little about your approach was seemingly using one SSD for both the system and the music. I always use one SSD for the system and others for the music.

My approach to using the Snakeoil OS was to install it on a spare SSD (I didn't read the instructions and tried to etch it, then wiped the drive and followed the instructions to the letter). I got it working as a player alongside my Hakai with Volumio. Established that Snakeoil OS sounded better than Volumio as a player. Emailed Kith explaining what I wanted from the server/player and the dedicated player. Kith recommended an approach and I followed that. But before I moved from using Snakeoil OS as a server I got familiar with the software. I guess I like to do things in byte-size chunks. That's why I went for NTFS straight away, tried to keep it simple. Once I've got over how enjoyable the music is I'll migrate to NFS (with advice from Kith).
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Re: Snakeoil OS

Post by David Neel »

Okay, winding back a little from sentiments expressed last night, I've persevered with Snakeoil and got it (sort of) working.

I have two issues currently: first, although I can get Snakeoil apparently working, I can't get my LSNAS (Win7 plus Asset) recognised. To beat this I installed a second disk onto the Hakai, with music files. This has mounted, and both MPD and LMS can see the files, as can Kazoo. But the second issue is that I can't play them. It may be a DAC problem, as I can't get any blue activity lights going on the Gigaport DAC, only the power one. But the Snakeoil web control app recognises it. I get the same result when I change the disks over to my second Hakai.

Any suggestions?
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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Have you looked at Alsa mixer, at what (inputs &) outputs are selected?
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Re: Snakeoil OS

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tokenbrit wrote: 2019-03-11 01:04 Can you try it the other way round: share from OSX, and CIFS mount to the music share on your laptop from SnakeOil? Hopefully SnakeOil then gives you an explorer to copy (pull) from laptop using the SnakeOil NAS onto one of your 600GB Intel 320 media/music SSDs...

Alternatively, which drive is Beth on? Pick one of the other media/music drives then reformat (& mount) it under SnakeOil - unmount the rest (except the OS drive ;) and try again... I recall you mentioned something that OMV allowed you to do: combine the music volumes into one logical 1.5TB space - wondering whether that's left any weirdness to the filesystem on those drives. Otherwise it's beyond me as I don't have SnakeOil to try, and don't know OSX... Maybe e-mail Agent Kith for ideas?
It might be possible to do it this way, but I wouldn't have the first clue how to go about it.

All the drives were formatted when Snakeoil was installed so I would imagine any remnants of OMV were eliminated. I have figured out, with much help from Agent Kith, that drive space is only recognized on the /media/music mount. Anything mounted under /music isn't recognized. So if I want to use all my free drive space I need to join all the free space under one volume. Apparently enabling LVM during install makes this possible, but I need to learn how. In the mean time I have mounted one of the 600gig drives under /media/music and transferred most of my music onto it. It works...mostly (more on that later).

I do not possess the vocabulary to adequately express how good it sounds.
FairPlayMotty wrote: 2019-03-11 01:13 I've changed mounts in the system. You can delete a mount and remount it. There's also a reset button in the Mount Points Configuration section.
Really? I don't see how that's possible. Even Agent Kith said this is doable only via SSH, but will be available in the Snakeoil GUI on later versions.
FairPlayMotty wrote: 2019-03-11 01:13 The thing that surprised me a little about your approach was seemingly using one SSD for both the system and the music. I always use one SSD for the system and others for the music.
I'm not sure where you got that idea because I do it the same way you do. I did partition the boot drive to utilize the ~280GB of otherwise wasted space, but I've removed that partition for the time being. I can always add it back later if I need it.

So I've managed to get it working...for the most part. I came into this project with fairly high expectations and I'm still floored by how good it sounds.

But unfortunately there's still a problem. Songs play one-at-a-time and they won't start without a little "nudge." In other words, I can load an album, hit play, and nothing happens. If I slide the progress slider and arbitrary distance and let go, the music plays fine. I can then drag the slider back to the beginning of the song and it'll play through to the end of the track, give me a split second burst of the next track, then stop. I have to go back in and repeat the trick with the slider for every song. As you might imagine, this is a PITA. This actually bothers me a lot less than it should. The music is just so damned good it's not really possible to feel annoyed.
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