Ampache - A Web-based Audio file manager

First look

I am writing this while trying to use the application

If you're looking for a quick-start, forget it. If you're looking for any kind of howto, forget that as well. It may be more productive to just let your cat walk across your keyboard for a few hours and use the result as your howto.

Ampache is a web-based audio file manager implemented with PHP and MySQL which allows viewing, editing, and playing audio files via the web. It has support for playlists, artist and album views, album art, random or vote-based play and per-user play-tracking/theming. Playback may be via HTTP, on-the-fly transcoding and downsampling, Mpd/Icecast, or integrated Flash player. Multiple Ampache servers can be linked together using XML-RPC. The software is fully localized in many languages.

Don't get your hopes up if you're on Ubuntu

Ampache can be installed on Ubuntu with the Package Manager or from the command line with:

sudo apt-get install ampache

Once the install has finished, however, setting up and running the application is like trying to bite the wall. There is no one place to go to get started.

Here's what I have figured out so far:

• You need Apache2, MySQL and PHP5 installed on the server machine
• You can use the root MySQL user (it must have a password).
• Instead of the root user, you can make a ampache user with:

$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
mysql> GRANT ALL ON ampache.* TO 'ampache'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'secret';

• During the install, and in secret, the installer installed /etc/apache2/conf.d/ampache.conf which set an alias for /ampache to /usr/share/ampache/www so that now http://localhost/ampache/ is a valid URL which supposedly helps you configure stuff. It doesn't.
• Browse to http://ip-of-your-server/ampache/ and when you get to step 3, type in the password you set for user ampache and click on "Insert Database" you get back:

Error: Ampache SQL user must have a password

• Other confusing aspects are that the two items
  Overwrite Existing and
  Use Existing Database
  are not radio buttons, but check boxes meaning you can check any combination. Not that it matters any.

I've abandoned trying to use the useless web interface and created the necessary MySQL tables manually with

mysql -D ampache -u ampache -p < /usr/share/ampache/www/sql/ampache.sql

And now, when browsing to http://ip-of-the-server/ampache/ I get a login prompt which, of course, doesn't work; failing with

Error Username or Password incorrect, please try again

NOTE: From the moment I created the ampache user, I checked that everything was ok by connecting the the MySQL server using mysql -D ampache -u ampache -p and after supplying the correct password was connected to the MySQL server so I know that all these errors have to do with the construction of the ampache application. Also, just to be sure, the user is a user on the server box.

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	First created Jul 26, 2011 ~ Last revised July 26, 2011