The Iomega Storcenter is a state-of-the-art NAS device, which comes in various shapes and sizes. Ranging from 150GB to up to 1TB of storage capacity they offer the optimum balance of space and power consumption compared to available disk space.

This guide will explain how to install Firefly onto the Storcenter.

Note: Large parts of this installation guide have been copied from the article NSLU2_Installation.

In general, there are two possible approaches.

  1. leave the original firmware in place

  2. reflash the unit with Open Protium project homepage

Choosing between those options might not be easy, but here are some tips:

Installing Firefly on the original firmware

This process is outlined in great detail here: Open Storcenter Yahoo Group

Note: after gaining permission from the author, the how-to guide will be posted here.

Installing Firefly on top of Open Protium

In a nutshell, there are three steps to getting Firefly and Open Protium to work;

  1. Flashing Open Protium
  2. Installing Firefly
  3. Configuring Firefly

Flashing Open Protium

Important: Make sure to backup all data on your Storcenter before attempting any of the steps outlined below.

The entire process on how to prepare your Storcenter and flash it with Open Protium is described here: Open Protium Flash HowTo

Once the flash is completed you can now move onto the next step of installing Firefly.

Installing Firefly

The first thing to note is that Firefly used to be know as mt-daapd. You'll often see references to the latter on web pages and forums but don't be confused, they're the same thing. Firefly is available as two releases – stable and nightly. You can find more information about these at the Firefly download page. I'm going to cover installation of both.

The second thing to note is that a great deal of software (including Firefly) is provided for Open Protium in precompiled format. This software is made available via feeds and is installed via the 'ipkg' command.

Pinnacle Soundbridge owners should note that they will have to follow the nightly build route as the current stable release (at the time of writing - 0.2.4) does not support this device. Roku branded Soundbridges do not suffer from this constraint. Pinnacle Soundbridge users should also ensure that they have loaded firmware 2.5.171 (minimum) on their Soundbridge.

Finally, if you are reinstalling Firefly e.g. when moving from a stable to nightly build or moving from one nightly to another then you may want to back up your config file (/etc/mt-daapd.conf) before installing. You can then restore your settings to the new config file that Firefly generates. Blindly copying the previously backed up config file over the newly generated config file is not advised in case of config file syntax or semantic changes between builds.

Installing a stable release

To do this ssh into your Storcenter and enter the following command 

# ipkg update

If the above command fails then check that your Storcenter's DNS and gateway settings are valid. Now enter the command 

# ipkg install mt-daapd

That's it! You can now check that Firefly is running and move on to configure it to suit your needs.

Installing a nightly build –

To do this, you need to tell the Storcenter about the software feed from fireflymediaserver.org. To do this telnet into your slug and enter the following command

Note: the link below will not work yet, please check back here for changes 

# echo "src firefly http://ipkg.fireflymediaserver.org/coming-soon" > /etc/ipkg/firefly.conf

If the above command fails then check that your Storcenter's DNS and gateway settings are valid. Now enter the command 

# ipkg update

Now enter the command 

# ipkg install mt-daapd-svn

That's it!

Making Sure Firefly Is Running

Telnet into your slug and enter the following command 

# ps

If Firefly is running then you should see something like this 

 5108 nobody     2660 S   /usr/sbin/mt-daapd 
 5109 nobody     6656 S   /usr/sbin/mt-daapd

If Firefly isn't running type 

/etc/init.d/mt-daapd start

Give it a minute or two and then repeat the ps command above. You should then see the output with at least one mt-daapd process. If not then check /var/log/messages to look for some clues as to what's going on and take a look at the troubleshooting page. In particular be aware that you may need to set mp3_dir in /etc/mt-daapd.conf to get Firefly to start (see Configuring Firefly below).

Once you have firefly up and running you can move on to configure it to suit your needs.

Configuring Firefly

Now all that needs to be done is to configure Firefly to point to your media files. There are two ways of doing this. The easiest way is via Firefly's web interface. Simply type http://IP_of_your_storcenter:3689 into the address bar of your browser. You don't need to enter a username and the default password is 'mt-daapd'. Once you've logged in select 'Configuration' from the menu. Note that if all of the configuration information is greyed out then the mt-daapd config file has the wrong permissions set. You should also see a warning to this effect. To sort this out ssh into the Storcenter as root and type 

# chmod 666 /etc/mt-daapd.conf

Alternatively you can telnet into your slug and directly edit the /etc/mt-daapd.conf configuration file by typing 

# vi /etc/mt-daapd.conf

Before doing this familiarise yourself with the UNIX vi editor. Here's the first vi command reference link I pulled off Google - www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html. If vi isn't to your taste then it is possible to install other editors on the Storcenter such as nano or JOE using the ipkg command.

The two main things you'll need to adjust are Firefly's music folder and Firefly's scan interval.

That's it! Stick some music on your Storcenter and off you go!

Storcenter Installation (last edited 2007-04-14 12:55:04 by gw)