forked-daapd allows you to set up an iTunes Media server that hosts all music, podcasts and audiobooks and shows up in iTunes like a shared library. While other daapd implementations don’t work anymore with the current iTunes versions, forked-daapd does.

Installation

forked-daapd does not provide packages for FreeBSD but luckily there’s an installer script, that works relatively good for the basic installation. First, we need to install build dependencies:

pkg install git-lite sudo

Now we can clone the forked-daapd repository from github:

git clone https://github.com/ejurgensen/forked-daapd.git

The installation script can be found in scripts/ so we run:

cd forked-daapd/scripts/
./freebsd_install_10.1.sh

After installing the dependencies, the pkg command issued in this script prompted me to type y for yes, but the script already went on with the next command. Ignoring this would result in an unusable installation so I canceled the script using CTRL-C and restarted it, which solved the problem.

Jailed environments

The script wants to mount proc and descfs but as you’re not allowed to mount file systems in a jail, this will likely fail. If you’re using ezjail, just ignore that problem. Jails by default get both file systems mounted automatically, so you’re good to go.

Configuration

The main configuration file is located in /usr/local/etc/forked-daapd.conf, here’s mine:

general {
    uid = "daapd"
    logfile = "/var/log/forked-daapd.log"
    loglevel = log
    admin_password = "unused"
    ipv6 = yes
}

library {
    name = "iTunes media"
    port = 3689
    directories = { "/usr/local/itunes-library" }
    podcasts = { "/Podcasts" }
    audiobooks = { "/Audiobooks" }
    compilations = { "/Compilations" }
    compilation_artist = "Various artists"
}

audio {
    nickname = "Computer"
}

#airplay "My AirPlay device" {
#   max_volume = 11
#   password = "s1kr3t"
#}

spotify {
}

mpd {
}

sqlite {
}

As you can see, I decided to place my iTunes library in /usr/local/itunes-library. The script automatically creates a daapd user, so be sure to chown your media library like that:

chown -R daapd:daapd /usr/local/itunes-library

To make mdns work, we also need to change the line starting with hosts: in /etc/nsswitch.conf:

hosts: files mdns dns

Now we can enable the services using:

sysrc forked_daapd_enable="YES"
sysrc dbus_enable="YES"
sysrc avahi_daemon_enable="YES"
service dbus start
service avahi-daemon start
service forked-daapd start

That’s it! Your media library should be visible from within iTunes:

Library maintenance

You might also want to provide an AFP share to enhance and manage your media library. Here’s how:

FreeBSD: Time Machine backup server with netatalk

Just remove the line time machine = yes from the afp.conf.