One of the problems we were running into in our home was the distribution of media files, specifically music. My desktop has a nice 300+ Gigs of hdd space on it, so it's fairly easy for me to host all of the music on separate partitions (pretty useful when the smaller systems in the house need to update, or fresh install), but the transferring of files over the lan got tiresome, and my wife likes quite a bit of my music collection, and is really out of room on her laptop. Likewise, my daughter's desktop is in serious need of hdd space, and she has a growing musical "habit". Also, I want my music in places other than the room my desktop is in, other than the apartment my computer is in, and I don't have an mp3 player large enough for all of my files.

The solution was to find a way to host all of the files on my desktop, and to allow access to them in a nice streaming sort of way. I didn't want to just open up lan access to my partitions, I only share out one small folder for samba, and like to keep it that way. So I went out and found me some Ampache! And it was good...Ampache is a PHP based music server that uses a MySql database to store its information. It allows users to browse online music collections, build playlists, stream content to a desktop music player, or even download the tracks. There is quite a bit of flexibility with Ampache, it's theme-able, providing a nice user interface, has album art support and all the bells and whistles you could want. You can add users through the web interface and set access levels, so security is a no-brainer. There's a working demo here to get a feel for how it plays.

I simply installed the "AMP" portion of the LAMP stack on top of my existing Ubuntu desktop installation (this is easily done using the tasksel command from the terminal), installed and told Ampache to catalog all of the files in my music partition, and ran it from there. Then the hits kept on coming, I found a nice plugin for Rhythmbox that connects to the Ampache backend and loads your Ampache catalog right in your music browser! Happy, if you like Rhythmbox. Also, in Amarok2 there is built in support for subscribing to Ampache servers. Neat.

So, after enabling the plugin on all of the client computers, all they have to do is fire up Rhythmbox, and they all have seamless access to my entire music collection. They get thier music fix, I look like a wizard!

Now, Ampache is in the repo, so after enabling community repo's, apt should get 'er done, but I have it installed manually. Here's how to do it:

• Install the rest of the LAMP stack by opening a terminal and typing in
  

  sudo tasksel

  select LAMP server and continue, following the instructions and answering the questions provided. Make sure to write down all of your answers!

• Also install phpMyAdmin To help manage the database in an easy way.
  

  sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

  Now you can browse to localhost/phpmyadmin with Firefox and login with the credentials you created during the LAMP install and create the required database and user for Ampache. Write this information down.

• Install Ampache
  • Using the command line you can do this with apt-get
    

    sudo apt-get install ampache ampache-themes

  • OR You can get the latest, most up to date release manually. You just need to
    1. Download the package by visiting this link
    2. Unpack it into your directory of choice, your /var/www/ folder is a good candidate if you are using a default LAMP install, and rename it so that it is easy to browse to. Something like /var/www/music/
    3. Open your web browser to localhost/music and follow the instructions. You will need the username and database information you created in phpmyadmin. Make sure to write down user name information when you create your Ampache admin user.
• Now you should be able to browse to locahost/music with Firefox, and log in. So go ahead and do this.
  • Go to the admin tab, and choose Add Catalog. Fill in the form and submit. This can take some time for large file systems.
  • In the admin tab, choose Add Users and add as many users as you need.
  • Still in the admin tab, choose add acl and add in some access control lists. Make the first one
    • Name Stream Access
    • Start Address 0.0.0.0
    • End Address 255.255.255.255
    • Level Read
    • User Ampache User (system)
    • Key Leave Blank
    • Type Stream Access

    make another one

    • Name Interface Access
    • Start Address 0.0.0.0
    • End Address 255.255.255.255
    • Level View
    • User Ampache User (system)
    • Key Leave Blank
    • Type Web Interface
• In your terminal
  

  sudo gedit /var/www/music/config/ampache.cfg.php

  and find the section that looks like this

  ; Use Access List
  ; Toggle this on if you want ampache to pay attention to the access list
  ; and only allow streaming/downloading/xml-rpc from known hosts xml-rpc 
  ; will not work without this on.
  ; NOTE: Default Behavior is DENY FROM ALL
  ; DEFAULT: false
  ;access_control = "false"

  and change it to look like this

  ; Use Access List
  ; Toggle this on if you want ampache to pay attention to the access list
  ; and only allow streaming/downloading/xml-rpc from known hosts xml-rpc 
  ; will not work without this on.
  ; NOTE: Default Behavior is DENY FROM ALL
  ; DEFAULT: false
  access_control = "true"

  Save the file and exit gedit.

• Almost Done! Repeat this next section on every client computer.
  • Get the Rhythmbox plugin by clicking here. The home page for this plugin is here, and a discussion on the Ampache forums about it can be found right here.
  • Unpack the plugin into the client computer's /home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins folder and fire up Rhythmbox.
  • In Rhythmbox go to Edit==>Plugins and click on the new Ampache plugin, and click configure.
  • If the lan ip of the server is 192.168.1.3, and it should be static, then set the url to http://192.168.1.3/music/server/xml.server.php For good measure you can enter in the password for the user, but leave the name blank.
  • Save your settings and wait for the library to load, this may take some time for large collections. Also, these setting work for me, if you have problems, check out the forum link I posted.
• Be Happy! You did it!

You should now have your music collection showing up in everybody's Rhythmbox library! Neat! This is particularly useful if you have a laptop in the living room or kitchen, and your collection of music is in the bedroom or study, and you need some tunes! You can also use this on a server with access from the internet if you have a static ip, or use DynDNS.org or some similar service. I use it to listen to music on my netbook while on campus. We also seem to be more into using the web interface than the Rhythmbox interface, since it simply can do more with the music. This setup (Ampache) is particularly nice, since it is not desktop environment, music player, 3rd party protocol or platform dependent. All you really need is an internet browser. What's more: This solution is 100% F/OSS.

What's also great about this setup? Now you have a working lamp install, and can experiment with other platforms (like Drupal!), and learn yourself some new skills.

Drawbacks? Well,the plugin doesn't seem to be actively maintained (any takers?), and if you use it you have to wait for the library to load every time you start Rhythmbox and this hang can take a few. Other than that, Ampache works wonderfully for us, I hope it works well for you, too!

Let me know what you think!

EDIT 2-2-2009:

As if my favorite media server application wasn't already awesome enough: Ampache is getting video support! Hell yes!