Trying to access music on a Mac's external HDD

[ICLlP]

Hi, I'm thinking of switching from Volumio to Rune for the simple reason that this forum seems to be a lot more active and helpful. My problem with Volumio is that I haven't worked out how to set it to access my music files, which are stored on an external HDD (4-bay Drobo) attached to my iMac. Unfortunately my Drobo doesn't have NAS functionality.

I read the thread about accessing music on a Windows PC and so I'm optimistic I'll be able to get Rune working with my Mac.

Can anyone give me the guidance I meet to get this to work?

And, does Rune have AirPlay functionality like Volumio does?

Cheers
Ifor

[Orion]

Hi Ifor,
RuneAudio has the AirPlay feature support integrated via Shairport daemon.
In the upcoming release v0.3-beta, we have improved this feature, achieving the perfect coexistence between MPD and Shairport; so you will be able to listen to your favorite music collection with MPD and send AirPlay stream to your player without have to stop playback on MPD prior to use AirPlay feature.
When you stop to listen to AirPlay stream, MPD resumes in his precedent state.

If I have understood correctly, you want to mount a share from your Mac to your RuneAudio player. To achieve this, you have to share your folder using SMB protocol, and mount that folder using "Sources" panel on your RuneAudio player.
What is your OSX Version? 10.6, 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9 ? I think is also possible to share your folder using NFS protocol (more stable), with some tweaks at OSX side. Let us know and we will support you.

Also, RuneAudio supports HFS+ partition mount. So you can attach your external disk, directly on your RuneAudio player, using USB connection.

Regards.

Simone

[ICLlP]

Thanks for the reply Simone. How long until release of the next version? It sounds good.
I'm away from home at present, but will post again when I am back. I'm running OS X 10.9.

[ICLlP]

OK. I'm home and have installed RuneAudio on my Pi. This is what I've entered in the UI:

Source name: Rip (being one of the music holding folders on the Drobo, which is attached to my iMac)
File share protocol: SMB/CIFS
IP address: 10.x.x.xxx (being the IP address of the iMac)
Remote directory: Drobo/Rip (Drobo being the name of the external HDD connected to the iMac)
User name: myusername
Password: mypassword

I get a little red cross and this error message:

Last system mount error
mount error(22): Invalid argument Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

Any help will be much appreciated.

Regards
Ifor

[pmiller056]

Hi

I had similar problems when setting up a Linux based fileserver with Runeaudio. You may be able to refer to the fileserver by name, but I've not tried it and I have no idea how reliable that method is. In my case I manually set up my fileserver with a fixed IP address rather than using DHCP. An example being, IP address 192.168.1.nn, gateway 192.168.1.1, DNS server 192.168.1.1, netmask 255.255.255.0 - You will need to set things correctly for your own network depending on the router that you use. An alternative would be to set up your router/dhcp server so that it always allocates the same IP address to the fileserver. Once this has been done we need to set up how the fileserver shares the files.

As an example, I've set up my fileserver so that the network name is 'Filestore' and the internal path in the fileserver to be shared as /mnt/3TBDisk/Public/Music. The SMB server shares this onto the network as 'NFSfiles'. I now need to set Runeaudio (or any of its cousins) to mount 'Filestore' with IP address 192.168.1.nn and mount the remote directory 'NFSFiles'. I spent a long time trying to work out why mounting remote directory '/mnt/...../Music' failed giving the same error message that you are seeing. Once this bit has been done, you will need to set up a username and password for Volumio to log in with - in the first instance use an admin login that you might normally use yourself to verify that the system will work. Once the sysem is working, set up a restricted, read only account on the fileserver for Runeaudio to use in everyday use.

I found using a second Linux or windows XP computer to browse my local network (windows 7 hides too much useful information!) and show all the connected systems and shared directories was very useful in working out what was going on. Unfortunately I do not know what a Mac system shows when browsing and faultfinding on a network.

Regards

Peter

[ICLlP]

Thanks Peter, I'll see what I can do.
On second thoughts, before I mess something up I think I'll wait to see if I get an answer from the development team.

[pmiller056]

Hi

I'm sorry, but in retrospect, what I wrote was not particularly clear. It was written late at night.

The best thing to do is to get another tablet/computer to browse your network (in windows Start/Computer/Network or something like that) and see what shows up. In my case I was setting Runeaudio to look for the wrong thing. Once that was corrected it works well. Some operating systems show more useful information than others when browsing a network. If you have access to an Android tablet/phone, then ES File Explorer works well for this purpose.

Regards

Peter

[ICLlP]

I have successfully accessed it from another Mac using smb://10.x.x.xxx/Drobo/Rip and from my iPad I can access it using the File Browser app, so I really don't understand why the Pi is struggling.

[naircl]

Hi, first post on the forum...
Here is what I did to allow NFS mounts from my runeaudio rpi to my desktop iMac, which holds an external drive with all my library. I tried the "NFS Manager" app, which freezes on Mavericks, and I also do not want to buy the OSX server version just to have the commodity of a GUI...
On your mac:
o edit the /etc/exports file (will be created):
"sudo vi /etc/exports"
/Volumes/Mydrive/Music -maproot=<your username> -ro -network 192.168.0.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
Replace your HDD path (note it doesn't have to be external, you can share any directory like this) and your username of course. There are tons of options for this file (man exports), most defaults are ok. "-ro" to mount read-only, and you can widen up or narrow the network down to just your rpi.
o Execute the following commands:
"sudo launchctl enable /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nfsd.plist" (enables the service to launch at boot time)
"sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nfsd.plist" (starts it immediately)

On runeaudio you can define the share via RuneUI, specifying a name for the source (this will be the mount point name for mpd under /mnt/MPD),
ip address of the NFSserver (your mac), and the directory path to you music files.

This has been working straight for 2+ days for me. The only problem I've found so far is that playing 24/192 files produces a periodical, rythmic stutter. My guess is that nfs3 on the mac may have issues with the nfs on the pi...

[ICLlP]

Is this still working for you? Why did you go the NFS route rather than SMB/CIFS?

Have I understood your instructions correctly?

On my iMac:

1) Open Terminal
2) type: sudo vi /etc/exports
3) hit: Enter
4) type: /Volumes/Drobo/Music -maproot=ifor -ro -network 10.0.0.103 -mask 255.255.255.0
5) hit: Enter
Question: should the above be the IP address of the iMac or the Pi?
Question: no need for password? Just username?
6) type: sudo launchctl enable /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nfsd.plist
7) hit: Enter
8) type: sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nfsd.plist
9) hit: Enter

10) On runeaudio define the share via RuneUI, specifying a name for the source (Music), ip address of the NFSserver (10.0.0.103), and the directory path to you music files (Drobo/Music) or is it (Volumes/Drobo/Music)?