Playing music on a server controlled by another computer?

[berlandb]

Hi,

I use a laptop computer and have to have my music on an external hard drive, because there is no space on the internal one.

I'm wondering, if I could buy a little server, attach the music hard drive to it and play music via the server. I would like to continue using Amarok on my laptop, but let it handle the music on the server and also play the music through the servers sound card.

Is that something, that can be done with a remote login and X11 or something?

Thanks for your help

[Spr0k3t]

Oh yeah, use MPD. Once you set it up you can pull the music stream from the server.

[ssam]

I do this.

the server is a via epia (http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/) MII6000. with ubntu installed on a 1GB compactflash, and a large IDE disk for the music.

the server has openssh-server installed, along with rhythmbox and a few X packages (you need xauth). I have public keys set up for passwordless logins. and avahi so that i can reach it by hostname.local rather than an ip address.

to run rhythmbox on the server (which is called flute), that displays on my laptop screen i run
ssh -X flute.local rhythmbox

[berlandb]

Thank you very much for your answers, guys.

[epimer]

I do this too, but differently again from the above methods (don't you love choice?).

My music and videos are on my server, and I have ~/Music and ~/Video folders on my laptop. I use the fuse kernel module and sshfs to mount the remote folders as if they were local, and then any media player (Exaile for me) can play them as if they were local files (the library is pointed at ~/Music, which is empty before I mount the remote folders).

You can find instructions for the whole shebang here (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#How_to_mount_remote_folders_into_loc al_Ubuntu_machine_.28sshfs.29).

[berlandb]

I do this too, but differently again from the above methods (don't you love choice?).

My music and videos are on my server, and I have ~/Music and ~/Video folders on my laptop. I use the fuse kernel module and sshfs to mount the remote folders as if they were local, and then any media player (Exaile for me) can play them as if they were local files (the library is pointed at ~/Music, which is empty before I mount the remote folders).

You can find instructions for the whole shebang here (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#How_to_mount_remote_folders_into_loc al_Ubuntu_machine_.28sshfs.29).

Hi,

thanks for sharing. I didn't have the possibility to try your solution yet, but as far as my understanding goes, it wouldn't do the job for me.

It stores the media data on a server, but then simply streams it to the laptop to play it on the laptop. This is not what I'm looking for. Instead the server is supposed to play the files through it's own soundcard, leaving the laptop as a remote control.

[epimer]

Whoops! Sorry, that's my fault entirely for misunderstanding your post.