NAME

moosicd - the server for the Moosic jukebox system.

SYNOPSIS

moosicd --help|-h|--version|-v

DESCRIPTION

moosicd is the server for the Moosic jukebox system. It sits around, waiting to respond to commands given by a Moosic client (such as the moosic manpage(1)). It also maintains a queue of items to be played, and if this queue is not empty, it pops off the first item from the head of the queue and executes a user-configurable command on that item. When this command terminates, moosicd goes on to the next item in its queue, assuming that the queue is not empty.

moosicd is not meant to be used as a system-wide daemon that serves all users on a system. Rather, every user that wishes to use Moosic should start a separate instance of moosicd, and one user cannot communicate with the Moosic server of another user without taking special measures (i.e. using the -c or -t options to moosic).

OPTIONS

moosicd is designed so that you normally don't need to use any of these options.

-h, --help: Prints help text and exits.
-v, --version: Prints version information and exits.
-s size, --history-size size: moosicd remembers the file names of previous songs that it played. This option sets the maximum size of this history list. The default value is 50.
-f, --foreground: By default, moosicd detaches itself from the current terminal and puts itself in the background (i.e. it becomes a daemon). This option disables such behavior.
-S, --stdout: By default, moosicd logs almost all of its printed output to a file. When this option is used, the output is instead printed to the standard output device. This also prevents the program from putting itself in the background and detaching from the current terminal.
-q, --quiet: This option suppresses almost all printed output from moosicd. Note that, by default, moosicd prints this output to a file, not the standard output device.
-d, --debug: This option causes moosicd to print lots and lots of messages about what it's doing. These messages are usually quite superfluous and bothersome. Note that unless the -S option is used these messages will appear in the log file instead of the standard output device.
-c directory, --config directory: Specifies the directory where moosicd should keep the various files that it uses. The default directory is ~/.moosic/. This option is useful only in extraordinary circumstances. If this option is used, any Moosic clients that wish to communicate with moosicd must be told to use the specified directory instead of the default.
-t port, --tcp port: This option directs the server to listen to the given TCP port number for client requests instead of using the normal communication method. Use of this option without the -l option is highly discouraged unless you know what you are doing because there is no guarantee that moosicd is secure against malicious input from a remote location. Note that an instance of moosicd which is started with this option will not accept requests from a client that is using the normal communication method.
-T port, --tcp-also port: This option directs the server to listen to the given TCP port number for client requests in addition to using the normal communication method. Use of this option without the -l option is highly discouraged unless you know what you are doing because there is no guarantee that moosicd is secure against malicious input from a remote location.
-l, --local-only: This directs the server to only listen for TCP connections that originate from the local computer, refusing connections from remote hosts. This only has an effect when --tcp or --tcp-also is used.

CONFIGURATION

moosicd figures out how to play items in its queue by consulting its configuration file, which associates string patterns (in the form of Perl-compatible regular expressions) with commands.

The format of this file is as follows: Every pair of lines forms a unit. The first line in a pair is a regular expression that will be matched against items in the queue. The second line in a pair is the command that will be used to play any items that match the regular expression. The name of the item to be played will be appended to the end of this command, unless the string ``$item'' occurs in the command, in which case every occurrence of ``$item'' will be replaced with the name of the item to be played.

The command won't be interpreted by a shell, so don't try tricks with quotes or globbing. If you need any of these fancy features, wrap up the command in a real shell script (and remember to use an ``exec'' statement to invoke the program that does the actual song playing, otherwise Moosic won't be able to do things like stop or pause the song).

Blank lines and lines starting with a '#' character are ignored. Regular expressions specified earlier in this file take precedence over those specified later.

FILES

moosicd makes use of several files, all of which are found in the .moosic/ directory in the home directory of the user who invoked the program (unless the -c or --config option is used).

config-$HOSTNAME: This is the configuration file that moosicd uses to associate file-types to player commands, as explained above.
server_log-$HOSTNAME: moosicd logs short notices of its activities to this file unless the -S option is used. It usually contains nothing more than a history of what songs have been played.
player_log-$HOSTNAME: This file contains the output of the player commands which are spawned by moosicd.
socket-$HOSTNAME: This is a socket file which is (normally) used to allow Moosic clients to contact the Moosic server. If moosicd isn't shut down properly, this file will need to be removed by hand. You should leave this file alone under other circumstances.

AUTHOR

Daniel Pearson <daniel.pearson@umbc.edu>