Hello and welcome to my first HOWTO at ubuntuforums.org

The reason why i wrote this HOWTO is, that i dont like all this stuff with many eyecandy. I know that there are loads of real nice CD Encoders based on GTK+ or stuff like that, but as you already know shell-based applications are faster and in my opinion they dont lose usability. So this tutorial is about encoding your music-cds with the nice gadget called abcde.

abcde stands for a better cd encoder and is your comfortable front-end, so you dont have to deal with LAME (for example) directly.

Ok let's start.

At first, we have to install abcde. You can use Synaptic for that, or just apt-get it directly (thats what i like to do, because its faster )

Code:
sudo apt-get -y install abcde
Note: the -y options only answers all questions with yes. if you dont want apt-get to do so, just remove the -y parameter.

If you read the apt-get output you can see the dependencies installed

Code:
cd-discid (0.9-1)
liboggflac3 (1.1.2-1ubuntu2)
vorbis-tools(1.0.1-1.4)
Optional:
If you want to encode your CD's as mp3-files you have to install LAME too.

Code:
sudo apt-get -y install lame

Configuration
So now we have all the important stuff on our system. We now have to find the config file and copy it to our home-directory

Code:
find / -name abcde.conf 2> /dev/null
Lets have a look at the find-output. There you can see, that the file is located in the /etc/ directory. so now lets copy it to our home directory...

Code:
cp /etc/abcde.conf ~/.abcde.conf
...and open it

Code:
gedit ~/.abcde.conf
Lets have a look at the important sections. every option is well-commented and should be easy to understand. if you have specific questions about a section dont hesitiate to ask!
By default, abcde uses the .ogg codec to encode your files. if you want to encode your files with the LAME-Encoder you have to uncomment this line

Code:
# Paths of programs to use
LAME=lame
#GOGO=gogo
#BLADEENC=bladeenc
#L3ENC=l3enc
#XINGMP3ENC=xingmp3enc
#MP3ENC=mp3enc
#VORBIZE=vorbize
#OGGENC=oggenc
#FLAC=flac
#SPEEXENC=speexenc
#MPPENC=mppenc
important is this parameter. you have to set it to your cd-drive

Code:
# CD device you want to read from
#CDROM=/dev/cdrom
CDROM=/dev/hdc
in my case i have to change it to /dev/hdc. DONT use /media/cdrom, because audio-cds never get mounted

if you want to encode your files to a fixed directory, and not to your current directory change this parameter for example

Code:
# If you'd like to make a default location that overrides the current
# directory for putting mp3's, uncomment this.
#OUTPUTDIR=`pwd`
OUTPUTDIR=~/music/
there are loads of other options, if you have a specific question just ask here.

finish
so now, if you want to encode a cd all you have to do is

(1) put the music cd in your drive
(2) open a terminal
(3) type "abcde"

and just wait for the output. abcde automatically searches for the names and if you want to change this, you can do so. otherwise press return twice and wait until the files are encoded

i hope you liked this short tutorial and please post your questions underneath

kind regards,
daschl