One of the biggest problem for potential GMPC users is setting MPD.
People often experience the following problems:
1. Once it installed via repository. It often runs by default as a system service. Unable to access the user music files.
2. They have to change the user it runs as, then change permission on directories (where mpd stores db/pid file) to reflect this.
Most users bail out during this step.
3. Audio fails to work because of pulseaudio daemon. Solving this in a nice way (not breaking audio playback for the user) can be non-trivial.
4. Or they have to disable it as service (most users have no clue on how todo this) configure it to run as user service.
5. Etc.
You can say that MPD might not be the right player for users that are unable to perform these steps. But a lot of users will miss out on a great music player. (Really MPD will playback just about anything, gap-less and with very low resource usage.).
To partially solve this problem I introduce AutoMPD, this is a module build into GMPC (git version) that will setup, start and stop MPD for you. No more hassle, start GMPC, switch to AutoMPD profile and you should have a working MPD.
It is not yet complete, but so far it seems to be working fine (atleast for me).
How to use it.
Requirements:
1. GMPC from git. (26 august or later)
2. MPD installed.
If you start MPD you should see a new profile (Music->profiles) named “Auto MPD”.
* If it does not show up, GMPC might have been unable to find the MPD binary.
Select this profile, and MPD should be started. If MPD is running you should see an icon in the status bar. (in git, this is located in the lower left corner).
Now you can play your music in ~/Music/. You can change this location in Preferences->connection. (for now you need to restart MPD in the “Automatic MPD” preferences page to make this active.)
After this everything should work.
By default MPD is configured to have an pulse output, if you want an alsa output, disable the pulse output and enable the alsa output in the “Automatic MPD” preferences page. (press restart again to make it active).
TODO?
More error messages. Explain the user how to solve errors.
Let the advanced user more finegrain configure MPD.
Automated MPD preferences page:
12 Comments
Do I get autompdscribble to so I can’t be lazier? I have cheese burgers to eat.
Great new function! Well done, too bad it isn’t in the 11.8 release!
gmpc is now officially ready for the big public 
It works like a charm here
Great idea! Perhaps an additional feature could be that it detects whether mpc is installed and, if so, adds its commands as keyboard shortcuts for the media control buttons on your keyboard.
why? GMPC can already bind multimedia keys just fine. (with the build in one, or with gmpc-mmkeys plugin to use gnome’s special api)
New Linux (Mint) user here, please help.
Tried various audio players (Rhythmbox, Banshee, Clementine, Gmusicbrowser, Guayaxxx, Deadbeef etc.) and all failed. I can only use VLC.
Followed the instructions here and finally tried to change Music Directory. The other players had a “Browse” button and I would chose “.gvfs”, but being no such button here, I entered something resembling that (can’t remember what exactly I entered) and saw that MPD’s running. But as there’s no activity indicating a library build-up, I went back and entered something else in the Music Directory field and now when I click “Connect”, I get this:
error code 13: problem connecting to “home/burak.cash/gmpc/autompdprofileid834724/socket”: Connection refused
I have 12075 songs on a WD network drive and I just want to use MPD/GMPC as a desktop audio player.
Any help appreciated.
All right, deleted the hidden .GMPC files in Home and entered this in Music Directory field (this is for others like me):
home/johnDo/.gvfs
By the way, grateful for this blog.
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Is there a way to turn autompd off (remove the profile permanently)? For some reason gmpc changes to it automaticly sometimes (seems pretty random). Then it tries to index everything (cpu hogging) in my home folder.
Autompd is defiantly a great idea, but old mpd users will not appreciate it.
owh that is not intentional. Never had it..
in ~/.config/gmpc/gmpc.cfg edit
[Automatic MPD]
enabled=”0″
[]
Please file a bug report.
KK thanks qball. I will leave it enabled for the time until it switches again so i can file a better report.
Ok a little more info, maybe there is no bug to file. I had been using a profile that popped up automatically (maybe avahi advertising) and had edited that one to ‘localhost’.
Gmpc was always reverting that profile back to its network address – so if my network card was down either because my network addr was no longer reachable (or because avahi stop advertising) gmpc would remove that profile and revert to automatic mpd.
Hope I was kind of clear.
yeah, that could explain it..