Two simple ideas to make Touch standalone with TinySBS (and why not SBS ?) acceptable

[erland]

Thanks for your help.
I must say I don't feel like tweaking TinySBS and would far prefer this feature being part of standard TinySBS without installing a plugin.
With 22 votes, we can hope Logitech pay attention and fix TinySBS with clear and user friendly messages, I doubt it is very complicated to do.
Anyway if I find some time to try that, I'll let you know.

I've added it as a patch in my "Patch Installer", so anyone that wants to try it can now install it by:
1. Install "Patch Installer" applet through "Settings/Advanced/Applet Installer"
2. Goto "Settings/Advanced/Patch Installer" and select to install "Disable auto rescan" patch

The result of this is:
- There will be no automatic scanning what so ever, so the only way to get things into the normal "Artists", "Albums" menus is by browsing the "My Music/Music Folder" menu or playing tracks.
- There is no way to perform a scanning of the complete library, you can only scan by browsing into a folder and in that case it will only scan the tracks inside that folder. I'm not sure a full rescan can be easily added as using the standard scanner will probably use too much resources, I'm guessing this is a reason why Logitech wanted auto rescan enabled by default.
- It's really slow, browsing into my main music library which contains about 280 album folders takes about 30 seconds. Also, starting Squeezebox Server takes at least 30 seconds.

So based on this, I'd say that there is no simple solution to get a system with decent performance. The above might work better than it does for me if you have a hierarchical folder structure and not a flat structure like me, but I suspect most people are going to find the performance too bad to be usable. It's of course still better than the current auto scan enabled version which makes it impossible to use at all for some users.

I think the only solution that would actually work would be to implement a lua applet that played music only locally on the Touch, with no support to stream music to other players and only supported folder based browsing with no reading of tags and similar stuff. Unfortunately this is something we can forget that Logitech will do and it's something I'm not interested in personally, so it has to be done by someone else that actually wants it and knows lua or is willing to learn lua.

[erland]

The patch is only available in 7.6, so people that's using 7.5 will have to upgrade to use it.

[kidstypike]

The patch is only available in 7.6, so people that's using 7.5 will have to upgrade to use it.

Erland, the patch is working fine for me, (8GB USB stick), it would seem to meet nicolas75's needs admirably.

I've now connected my Boom to TinySB, and I'm happily browsing the USB music folders on the Boom's display.

Random Song Mix only plays songs that I've previously browsed of course.

I'll try it with my full library on an external USB HD when I've retrieved it from the bottom of the garden where I've slung it!

Cheers

[nicolas75]

I've added it as a patch in my "Patch Installer", so anyone that wants to try it can now install it by:
1. Install "Patch Installer" applet through "Settings/Advanced/Applet Installer"
2. Goto "Settings/Advanced/Patch Installer" and select to install "Disable auto rescan" patch

Thanks a lot, I'll try as soon as I can.
Just one question, how do I revert to normal mode ?
uninstall the patch ?

You may add a comment in http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16564
so if the bug gets assigned, people working on it will know you already did something.

[erland]

Thanks a lot, I'll try as soon as I can.
Just one question, how do I revert to normal mode ?
uninstall the patch ?

Yes, if you want to restore the original behavior you uninstall the patch through the "Patch Installer" menu. A factory reset will also restore it.

[nicolas75]

Yes, if you want to restore the original behavior you uninstall the patch through the "Patch Installer" menu. A factory reset will also restore it.

I could install the patch installer
got version 1.1.55

I can get in "Settings/Advanced/Patch Installer" but always get "no patches found"

I reboot several times, install and uninstall patch installer several times.
same thing.

note that while you don't connect to the usb device, it is impossible to enter "Settings/Advanced/Patch Installer", and you don't get any message telling why.

Touch firmware is 7.6.1 r9486

[erland]

I could install the patch installer
got version 1.1.55

I can get in "Settings/Advanced/Patch Installer" but always get "no patches found"

I reboot several times, install and uninstall patch installer several times.
same thing.

note that while you don't connect to the usb device, it is impossible to enter "Settings/Advanced/Patch Installer", and you don't get any message telling why.

Touch firmware is 7.6.1 r9486

It relies on Squeezebox Server so you need to be connected to a Squeezebox Server when using the Patch Installer, either the built-in server in the Touch or a standalone server on a computer.

I've only tried it myself with a server on a computer, so there might be some issues when used with the built-in server on the Touch.

However, I know it won't work with mysqueezebox.com, so that probably explains why it doesn't work unless you have the USB device connection.

But I've lately seen some mysqueezebox.com problem and the repository files used by PatchInstaller is stored on mysqueezebox.com so if it isn't available that might be the reason why you don't seen any patches.

[nicolas75]

It relies on Squeezebox Server so you need to be connected to a Squeezebox Server when using the Patch Installer, either the built-in server in the Touch or a standalone server on a computer.

I've only tried it myself with a server on a computer, so there might be some issues when used with the built-in server on the Touch.

However, I know it won't work with mysqueezebox.com, so that probably explains why it doesn't work unless you have the USB device connection.

But I've lately seen some mysqueezebox.com problem and the repository files used by PatchInstaller is stored on mysqueezebox.com so if it isn't available that might be the reason why you don't seen any patches.

Right, I have to start SBS on the computer to be able to see patches list, and which ones are installed or not.
It works if I am connected to TinySBS, but SBS has to be accessible and running.

I installed the patch.
However I am not sure what happens.

I erased .Squeezebox directory on the USB stick and plugged it
I can browse by Artist, Album etc ... and files in .Squeezebox\cache are created.
So I am not sure if scan is really disabled (scanning the usb stick is quite fast, so I cannot tell)
Browsing is as fast as usual (about 330 files)

[nicolas75]

actually it seems slower to enter a folder where I have about 80 files.

There is a remaining problem, each time you unplug the usb device, and plug it again (or plug another one), you have to restart TinySBS.
This is very long.

Would it be possible to start TinySBS once for all, even if there is no usb device plugged ?

[erland]

actually it seems slower to enter a folder where I have about 80 files.

There is a remaining problem, each time you unplug the usb device, and plug it again (or plug another one), you have to restart TinySBS.
This is very long.

Would it be possible to start TinySBS once for all, even if there is no usb device plugged ?

I believe it stores the database on the USB drive, so I don't think this is possible. The reason is probably to save write cycles on the built in persistent memory in the Touch but I'm not completely sure, there might be some other reasons too.