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Topic: foobar2000 install on NAS? (Read 1801 times) previous topic - next topic
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foobar2000 install on NAS?

I'm a NAS neophyte, just got an Asustor Drivestor 2 Lite and have it working just fine.  Experimentally copied one artist folder with three albums. Based on advice from @SimBun (thanks again!) I installed and configured MinimServer. Result: I can see and play the files from an android device.

My question is, why not install f2k as a media server on the NAS? Ideally, I'd like to be able to access the NAS install from desktop, complete with the lovely Eole skin that I'm accustomed to.

• Should I do a portable install on the NAS? If so, does it support skins?
• Is a standard install feasible on a NAS? If so, is there some reason why it isn't advisable?

Or is the most straightforward approach to use the standard f2k install I already have on the desktop and just redirect the Media Library to monitor the NAS?

I think I just answered my own question, but would appreciate confirmation from someone more experienced, before I do something dumb.
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: pannonica on
Or is the most straightforward approach to use the standard f2k install I already have on the desktop and just redirect the Media Library to monitor the NAS?

Yes. This is what I do.

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: MrMonkey on
Yes. This is what I do.
Thanks!


Another thought:

It seems that foobar2000 (even the portable install) has more functionality (e.g. internet radio streaming) than, for instance, the free versions of UPnP apps here. Why should I use something other than f2k on the NAS?
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: pannonica on
Quote from: MrMonkey on
Yes. This is what I do.
Thanks!


Another thought:

It seems that foobar2000 (even the portable install) has more functionality (e.g. internet radio streaming) than, for instance, the free versions of UPnP apps here. Why should I use something other than f2k on the NAS?
Quote from: pannonica on
Quote from: MrMonkey on
Yes. This is what I do.
Thanks!


Another thought:

It seems that foobar2000 (even the portable install) has more functionality (e.g. internet radio streaming) than, for instance, the free versions of UPnP apps here. Why should I use something other than f2k on the NAS?

Why do you need UPnP Media Server on your NAS?
You just need to share your music library (SMB since you'll probably running fb2k on Windows) and point fb2k to that share.

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Gabriel Schwartz on
Why do you need UPnP Media Server on your NAS?
You just need to share your music library (SMB since you'll probably running fb2k on Windows) and point fb2k to that share.

Yes, I'm a little lost, as I said.

The idea is to have the music library on NAS and be able to access it directly from either the desktop or from android devices—primarily via tablets, in fact. I've established that MinimServer does this, but was wondering if running f2k natively on the NAS is feasible and superior.

I just put a portable install of f2k on the NAS, but of course it turns out that it needs to be launched from another device (i.e., desktop PC), so that isn't helpful. It seems that to achieve what I want I'd need a Windows emulator (Wine?) which may be more trouble than it's worth.
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: pannonica on
The idea is to have the music library on NAS and be able to access it directly from either the desktop or from android devices—primarily via tablets, in fact. I've established that MinimServer does this, but was wondering if running f2k natively on the NAS is feasible and superior.
Hi @pannonica,

f2k is a player (and tagger, and ...), it doesn't enable other devices to access your music.
Your current setup with MinimServer on the NAS is great, it sounds like you just need to map the NAS share to your Windows PC and point f2k to it.

What are you going to use f2k on the desktop for?

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: SimBun on
f2k is just a player, it doesn't serve your music to other devices.
Your current setup with MinimServer on the NAS is great, it sounds like you just need to map the NAS share to your Windows PC and point f2k to it.

Oh I thought that the foo_upnp component made it into a server. I can already see the few music files I experimentally put on the NAS, so that's good.

Quote from: SimBun on
What are you going to use f2k on the desktop for?

For managing the library and occasional playback. That's the plan.
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: pannonica on
Oh I thought that the foo_upnp component made it into a server. I can already see the few music files I experimentally put on the NAS, so that's good.
foo_upnp did/does but it was last updated in 2015 (only available now in 32bit), plus f2k doesn't run on a NAS, so even if you did want to use it you'd need to run it on a Windows or Linux machine.

Quote from: pannonica on
Quote from: SimBun on
What are you going to use f2k on the desktop for?

For managing the library and occasional playback. That's the plan.
The typical workflow is to rip/download your music to the PC, use f2k to tag it, then copy it to the NAS.
Once it's on the NAS you can still point f2k to it and browse/play/tag it from there, but you won't want to be doing any batch tagging operations as it'll be much slower because it's across the network.

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: SimBun on
The typical workflow is to rip/download your music to the PC, use f2k to tag it, then copy it to the NAS.
Once it's on the NAS you can still point f2k to it and browse/play/tag it from there, but you won't want to be doing any batch tagging operations as it'll be much slower because it's across the network.

Yes, that's what I'll do. Currently copying music library from external hard drive to NAS via usb.  >yawn<

Thanks for all your advice!
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: pannonica on
Thanks for all your advice!
I've used MinimServer for over a decade and it's very robust, and the licensed version very configurable, but if you have any specific requirements let us know as there may be something more appropriate.

And remember a backup  :)

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: SimBun on
And remember a backup  :)

Oh definitely.
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: pannonica on
but was wondering if running f2k natively on the NAS is feasible and superior.
:D  If you want your music to play out of the NAS (rather than your PC or whatever), then yes – why not!

You seem to be missing the link that you need a program to convert a media file into pure audio data and send it to the audio output on that hardware.  FB2K does that, so even if you used it as a media server on the NAS, you would still need to run it (or something else) on the client to access the media server and convert the data to audio.  And frankly, why bother?  The NAS (probably) has a media server already built in, and FB2K does an excellent job of turning the data into audio.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: fooball on
:D  If you want your music to play out of the NAS (rather than your PC or whatever), then yes – why not!

You seem to be missing the link that you need a program to convert a media file into pure audio data and send it to the audio output on that hardware.  FB2K does that, so even if you used it as a media server on the NAS, you would still need to run it (or something else) on the client to access the media server and convert the data to audio.  And frankly, why bother?  The NAS (probably) has a media server already built in, and FB2K does an excellent job of turning the data into audio.

Right. I'm satisfied with MinimServer on the NAS and accessing it with f2k 2.1.1 (desktop) and also f2k mobile (android). No need to get fancy/stupid beyond that.

The next frontier is figuring out how to access the NAS remotely, i.e. when I am not on the LAN. Am now mucking around with Tailscale and have set up a VPN with NAS/PC/Android all connected, but I don't really know what to do beyond that. Tried entering the NAS IP address in f2k mobile's user-specified server list, but that does nothing—of course an unmediated direct connection would be useless. Thinking that I probably need to further configure MinimServer in some way.
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #13 –
Looked at this thread from a couple of years ago, but it isn't entirely helpful. Will keep searching the forum.
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: pannonica on
The next frontier is figuring out how to access the NAS remotely, i.e. when I am not on the LAN. Am now mucking around with Tailscale and have set up a VPN with NAS/PC/Android all connected, but I don't really know what to do beyond that. Tried entering the NAS IP address in f2k mobile's user-specified server list, but that does nothing—of course an unmediated direct connection would be useless. Thinking that I probably need to further configure MinimServer in some way.

Assuming you're running TailScale on your NAS:
  • In foobar mobile go to the 'Media Servers' screen
  • Long press the MinimServer instance that appears under Local Network and choose 'Add to user servers'
  • Long press the server that's just been added under 'USER-SPECIFIED-SERVERS' and select 'Edit URL'
  • Replace the ip address with the TailScale IP address assigned to the NAS (not the LAN IP address)

That should be it.

There are very few applications that allow you to do this, most rely on discovering the server through UPnP which isn't possible over TailScale.

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: SimBun on
That should be it.

There are very few applications that allow you to do this, most rely on discovering the server through UPnP which isn't possible over TailScale.

Worked perfectly. So simple, yet it would have taken me ages to *maybe* figure it out on my own. I was so far off base that I was installing SSH terminals on my phone and pretending I know Linux. I can't thank you enough!
“It is nearly an insoluble pancake, a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.” – Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman
 

Re: foobar2000 install on NAS?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: pannonica on
I was so far off base that I was installing SSH terminals on my phone and pretending I know Linux. I can't thank you enough!
I'm glad I got to you in time ;)