RPiForked-Daapd

This page is intended for people who have their music stored on their Raspberry Pi, and who want to run an iTunes server (DAAP server) and listen to their music in one of these ways:


 * streaming to an AirPlay device and controlling the server with a remote app (like Apple Remote on iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad or TunesRemote+ on Android) or with iTunes
 * streaming to a DAAP player/client (like iTunes, Rhythmbox, Music Pump DAAP Player)
 * using the Pi's own sound card and controlling the server with a remote app or with iTunes
 * streaming to a Roku device

forked-daapd is an iTunes server (DAAP server) made by Julian Blache, based on mt-daapd (Firefly). It's also a Roku server (RSP server). Unfortunately forked-daapd is no longer maintained upstream, so the packages available in the Debian repositories have a couple of issues. This guide will tell you how to install these older versions, but if you want a version which is more up-to-date you can look here.

Installing from Debian repositories
forked-daapd version 0.11 is in the Debian stable tree allowing it to be installed via apt-get, but this version is obsolete. You can find a newer version (0.19) in backports, however be aware that this version also has some issues (notably incompatibility with Remote 3.0 and audio that drops after 5 minutes). See above if you want to use a newer, but non-official package.

To install the official Debian package from backports do the following:

From the command prompt sudo nano /etc/apt./sources.list Add the line deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

Ctrl+X to exit, Y to save followed by enter

Update apt-get sudo apt-get update

Installing forked-daapd sudo apt-get -t squeeze-backports install forked-daapd

Press y and return when prompted This should install successfully.

Configuring forked-daapd
Once installed the forked-daapd server will be started automatically, however we need to stop it while we configure it so that the changes are accepted

The following will stop the server sudo /etc/init.d/forked-daapd stop

We will now edit the configuration file sudo nano /etc/forked-daapd.conf

Change the line directories = { "/srv/music" }

to point to wherever your music lives, I have mounted a USB drive with my library, the user "daapd" will require read access

Remove the # from before the line card = "default"

This enables local playback on the pi

Ctrl+X to exit, Y to save followed by enter

Start forked-daapd back up sudo /etc/init.d/forked-daapd start

Testing it worked
If it all went well, if you open iTunes on a computer connected to the same network a your library should appear under Shared, allowing you to stream music to you machine.

Enabling Remote
If you have an iOS device you can control the playback via the Remote app. To set this up:

Create a file in the same directory as your music, it can be called anything but must have a .remote extension nano /pathtoyourmusiclibrary/temp.remote

Now add two lines, the first must be the exact name of your device (You can find this in Settings - General - About), the second is the passcode given by the remote app when adding a new library: for example: GregsiPad 1234

Ctrl+X to exit, Y to save followed by enter

As soon as you do this the Remote app should add your library, in the 19-04 release of Debian ensure you enable sounds sudo modprobe snd_bcm2835

If you play a song using Remote app, but it closes, try add the daapd user to the audio group sudo adduser daapd audio

If you have any problems change the logging level to info in the config and check the logs at /var/log/forked-daapd.log.