How to install Logitech Media Server (Squeezebox Server)?

At the moment of writing latest version is 7.9.2.

It is availlable here. You can find an overview of several other versions here. Copy the link to a file according to your system into clipboard.

Download the file to your system with wget link. Install the file with sudo dpkg -i file. This will fail to install due to missing dependencies.

Fix it with sudo apt -f install.

Start it with sudo service logitechmediaserver start.

Check if running with top.

Connect to the server via Web-GUI availlable at http://IPofYOURserver:9000.

Settings are in /var/lib/squeezeboxserver/prefs/server.prefs.

This includes directories for the media library but also settings for local clients, like the size of the information shown in the display of an old Squeezebox Boom.

In case you want to avoid setting up everything new you can override server.prefs. To be able to do this you have to sudo systemctl stop logitechmediaserver.

Then copy the file and sudo chown squeezeboxserver:nogroup /var/lib/squeezeboxserver/prefs/server.prefs.

Finally, sudo systemctl start logitechmediaserver.

UPDATE: Maybe the user squeezeboxserver needs to be added to group users. Also, locations for Playlists should be chmod 775.

If you use a firewall like ufw handling ports is explained here.

Other files can be found here: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Logitech_Media_Server_file_locations#Ubuntu_.3E12.04

I upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 and that broke my installation but I figured out how to make it work again:

After some tempering around, I considered to do a fresh install. So I deleted the old stuff in /var/lib/squeezeboxserver/

Then I got me a fresh deb-packet for version 8.0 (beta) from: http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/?ver=8.0

Personally I used the most plattform version but depending on plattform just select a fitting deb:

wget http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/8.0/lms/cf7bcdb87b4f8bf6f71f5b5444c923afae4c300d/logitechmediaserver_8.0.0~1589180193_all.deb

Installed it with: dpkg -i logitechmediaserver_8.0.0_1588799628_all.deb

As I tried older versions too and even tried a git checkout I hope I lack no detail another script has already done for me without noticing it.

If the dpkg installation not already added a user and group please do so:

adduser squeezeboxserver
usermod -a -G squeezeboxserver squeezeboxserver

Create a directory for the pid file:

mkdir /var/run/logitechmediaserver

And give it to that user and group:

chown squeezeboxserver:squeezeboxserver /var/run/logitechmediaserver

Same goes for the stuff in /var/lib/squeezeboxserver/

chown squeezeboxserver:squeezeboxserver /var/lib/squeezeboxserver
chown -R squeezeboxserver:squeezeboxserver /var/lib/squeezeboxserver/*

The problem comes with the startup script in /etc/init.d. It simply does not work, as Ubuntu 20.04 does not have the start-stop-daemon any more. It is simply linked to /bin/true which might work for some scripts but does not work for the logitechmediaserver. I tried a C implementation for this program, but it had it hinges so I dropped the start-stop-daemon and modified the startup program arcordingly.

Just store the old startup script away (just to be save) and copy this content into an editor of your choice:

#!/bin/sh
#
# $Id$
#
# logitechmediaserver   initscript for slimserver.pl
#           This file should be placed in /etc/init.d.
#
# Original Author: Mattias Holmlund
#
# Updated By: Dan Sully, Michael Herger, Alexander Hartmann

#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             logitechmediaserver
# Required-Start:       $all
# Required-Stop:        $all
# Should-Start:         $all
# Should-Stop:          $all
# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 6
# Short-Description:    Startup script for the Logitech Media Server
# Description:      Logitech Media Server powers the Squeezebox, Transporter and SLIMP3 network music \
#           players and is the best software to stream your music to any software MP3 \
#           player. It supports MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and more! \
#           As of version 7.7 it also supports UPnP clients, serving pictures and movies too!"
### END INIT INFO
#
# -e  Exit immediately if a command exits with a non-zero status.
set -e

# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
. /lib/init/vars.sh

# Define LSB log_* functions.
# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
# and status_of_proc is working.
. /lib/lsb/init-functions


### About logitechmediaserver
# The logitechmediaserver is kind of special. It uses the
# squeezeboxserver_safe script, to restart any died squeezeboxserver. This
# can easily happen, for example if you use a MySQL server. Depending on unix
# flavour you are running they sometimes do a regular restart. That would
# cause the squeezeboxserver to terminate. Because of that the 
# squeezeboxserver_safe starts a logitechmediaserver every few seconds, which
# gets shut down again if any other logitechmediaserver is still running.
#
# Sadly this procedure messes up, the process id file. You would get a new id
# file, every time a new server process gets started. That process will
# terminate but the process id of the first server process is lost. So the
# killing the squeezeboxserver have to be done with analysing the process
# table.
#
# As I upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 my logitechmediaserver stopped working.
# Installing the lastest 8.0 version was no problem downloading the deb-packet
# and installing with dpkg. But the server did not start. I could start it
# manually but the startup script was not able to start it. After some looking
# around I found this:
#
#           /sbin/start-stop-daemon -> /bin/true
#
# This explains why the start up script is not working. There is no package
# in the ubuntu package repository for the start-stop-daemon.
#
# First I tried the C implementation of start-stop-daemon from Dale O'Brien on
# github (https://github.com/daleobrien/start-stop-daemon). It does not
# implement the --remove-pidfile option the original script. But more 
# problematic it threw the error not able to terminate the server while
# doing it without a problem.
#
# I had to compile the C implementation from Dale O'Brien myself, which
# worked without a hitch. Considering the limiations of the implementation
# I came to the conclusion to ditch the start-stop-daemon completly and 
# doing it the old school way.


PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DESC="Logitech Media Server"
NAME=squeezeboxserver
NEWNAME=logitechmediaserver
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/$NAME
DAEMON_RESTARTER=/usr/sbin/${NAME}_safe
PIDFILE=/var/run/$NEWNAME/${NEWNAME}.pid
SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NEWNAME
SLIMUSER=$NAME
SLIGROUP=$NAME
PREFSDIR=/var/lib/$NAME/prefs
LOGDIR=/var/log/$NAME/
CACHEDIR=/var/lib/$NAME/cache
CHARSET=utf8
SLEEPTIMER=1

## if you want to add additional options
## use /usr/sbin/squeezeboxserver --help 
## for the supported options and place them
## into the configfile  /etc/default/logitechmediaserver


# Read config file if it is present.
if [ -r /etc/default/$NEWNAME ]; then
    . /etc/default/$NEWNAME
elif [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ]; then
    . /etc/default/$NAME
fi

#
#   Function that starts the daemon/service.
#
d_start() {
        # Where is your su installed?
        SU_BIN=$(command -v su)

        # Use squeezeboxserver_safe to restart the daemon when
        # it dies. This must be done to handle mysql restarts.

        $SU_BIN - $SLIMUSER \
          -s /bin/sh \
          -c "$DAEMON_RESTARTER \
                $DAEMON \
                  --user $SLIMUSER \
                  --group $SLIGROUP \
                  --prefsdir $PREFSDIR \
                  --logdir $LOGDIR \
                  --cachedir $CACHEDIR \
                  --charset=$CHARSET \
                  --daemon \
                  $SLIMOPTIONS \
              > /dev/null 2>&1 &"


        # Writing the pid for the restarter          
        PID=$(ps ax | \
          grep "$DAEMON_RESTARTER $DAEMON" | \
          grep -v grep | \
          head -1 | \
          awk '{print $1}' )

        if [ $PID ]
        then
          if [ $PID -gt 0 ]
          then
            echo -n "  Started the restarter with the process id: "
            echo $PID

            if [ -e $PIDFILE ]
            then
              rm $PIDFILE
            fi

            echo -n $PID > $PIDFILE
          fi
        else
            echo "  ERROR: No process id for the restarter could be found!"
        fi


        # Check if the server is successfully started        
        PERL_BIN=$(command -v perl)

        PID_SERVER=$(ps ax | \
          grep "$PERL_BIN $DAEMON" | \
          grep -v grep | \
          head -1 | \
          awk '{print $1}' )

        if [ $PID_SERVER ]
        then
          if [ $PID_SERVER -gt 0 ]
          then
            echo "  Started the server successfully."
          else
            echo "  ERROR: No process id for the server could be found!"        
          fi
        fi
}


#   Function that stops the daemon/service.
#
d_stop() {
    echo -n "  Checking if the restarter is still running: "

    ## This will kill the squeezeboxserver_safe script. So we don't have
    ## to bother about it, starting new processes.

    PID1=$(ps ax | \
      grep "$DAEMON_RESTARTER $DAEMON" | \
      grep -v grep | \
      head -1 | \
      awk '{print $1}' )


    if [ $PID1 ]
    then
      echo positive
      if [ $PID1 -gt 0 ]
      then
        echo -n "  Stopping now restarter: "

        kill $PID1

            if [ -e $PIDFILE ]
            then
              rm $PIDFILE
        fi

        echo done.
      fi
    else
            echo negative
        fi

    ## We have to kill at least one server process. Possible two processes
    ## and in weird cases  under real high load even three processess.
    ## So a loop it is.
    ## We have to wait for at least one second for closing the process
    ## and analyzing the process list again.

        echo -n "  Checking if any server instances are running: "

    PERL_BIN=$(command -v perl)

        PID2=$(ps ax | \
          grep "$PERL_BIN $DAEMON" | \
          grep -v grep | \
          head -1 | \
          awk '{print $1}' )

        if [ $PID2 ]
        then
          echo positive
          echo -n "  Stopping now all server instances: "
          if [ $PID2 -gt 0 ]
          then
            while [ $(ps ax | \
              grep "$PERL_BIN $DAEMON" | \
              grep -v grep | \
              head -1 | \
              awk '{print $1}') ]
            do
          kill $(ps ax | \
                grep "$PERL_BIN $DAEMON" | \
                grep -v grep | \
                head -1 | \
                awk '{print $1}')
              sleep $SLEEPTIMER
            done
            echo done
          fi
        else
          echo negative
        fi
}

#
#   Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service.
#
d_reload() {
    start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --signal 1
}

case "$1" in
  start)
    echo "Making sure that $DESC is not running: "
    d_stop
    echo "Starting $DESC:"
    d_start
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping $DESC:"
    d_stop
    ;;
  restart|force-reload)
    #
    #   If the "reload" option is implemented, move the "force-reload"
    #   option to the "reload" entry above. If not, "force-reload" is
    #   just the same as "restart".
    #
    echo "Restarting $NAME."
    d_stop
    d_start
    ;;
  status)  
    status_of_proc /usr/bin/$NEWNAME $NEWNAME
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload|status}" >&2
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

exit 0

Yeah, it's not pretty, but it does the job for me and will hopefully help you too. You have to place it in /etc/init.d under the name logitechmediaserver

After that you have to run the following command to make systemctl happy:

systemctl daemon-reload

Just give it a test run with starting it:

/etc/init.d/logitechmediaserver start

You should be able to log in with your webbrowser to http://YourServerIP:9000/ and configure it.

And test if it does shut down again:

/etc/init.d/logitechmediaserver stop

When everything has worked out, enable the service:

systemctl enable logitechmediaserver.service