SmallNetBuilder - Small Network Help - How To:Hacking the Linksys NSLU2 - Part 3

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How To:Hacking the Linksys NSLU2 - Part 3 - Adding an iTunes server

Jim Buzbee

August 24, 2004

Introduction

If you've been following along with my previous articles [Part 1] [Part 2], you now have the ability to telnet into your NSLU2 and start up NFS. Those are valuable capabilities, but this time we're going for the entertainment value.

Like many people, my MP3 collection is beginning to eat up some serious disk space. As well as getting my music moved to central storage, it would also be nice to share it among different computers in the household. Does the NSLU2 have the right stuff to be a music server? It's small enough to tuck into your entertainment center. It's silent, and its storage capabilities are limited only by the the size of the disk you plug into it. It looks promising to me!

A reader of my previous articles suggested a look at an iTunes server called mt-daapd. Running mt-daapd on the NSLU2 would allow you to store all of your music in one place and serve it up to Mac OSX and Windows machines running iTunes.

An interesting feature of mt-daapd is that it uses Rendezvous to advertise itself to the local network. This means automatic discovery of our NSLU2 music server. Fire up iTunes on either a Windows or a Mac OSX machine and our little server automatically shows up as an available music library. Very cool. Building mt-daapd will be a bit more challenging than our previous NFS build, but step-by-step I'll show how to do it.

Disclaimer: It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Exploring the NSLU2 by looking at its internal file structures using any method that doesn't modify its code should leave your warranty intact. But modifying the NSLU2 in any way will void your warranty.

TomsNetworking, Tom's Guides Publishing and I are not responsible for any damage that the information in this article may cause to your NSLU2 or any data it manages.

So download a copy of the current firmware before you start, and don't go trying to get help from Linksys if you break it.

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