G2

Original code by Jonnty <http://gbs.fm/bugs>

G2 is a web-app to manage a playlist for a Shoutcast (or compatible) streaming media server.

G2 acts as an internet jukebox. Listeners upload and add songs to a shared playlist. You can also vote for and comment on the music that's playing!

If you're a Something Awful forums member, see this thread for the goon-run gbs.fm, powered by G2: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3337579

If you want to get G2 running for yourself, keep reading!

Prerequisites

To install this, it probably helps to know Django well enough to configure and deploy a project. You'll also be needing to dabble in shoutcast or icecast, so that'll also help. Oh, and also mysql.

Requirements

Install these packages, for they are required for a functioning installation

• mysql-server (has some manual SQL via QuerySet.extra(), mysql is required!)
• python-mysqldb
• ices 0.4 (reads mp3 files and streams them to Shotcast). This is an old version, so it's easiest to build this from source. (the old version is necessary, the newer ices only streams ogg)
• A streaming server such as Shoutcast DNAS or Icecast.

to build icecast, you'll also need to install (ubuntu packages, other distros may vary):

• build-essential
• python-dev
• libshout-dev
• libxml2-dev
• libmp3lame-dev

Python packages to install

You can pip-install these, but make sure they're installed somehow

• django
• simplejson
• mutagen
• markdown

Setting up G2

The repository is a django project. It must be in a directory called "pydj", various imports depend on it.

Mysql

Create a mysql database and user, give that user full access to the database

settings.py

Create yourself a settings.py file. The easiest way is to copy the template from:

<django root>/conf/project_template/settings.py

Then follow these steps. They are all necessary, optional steps are listed later.

• Configure your database parameters

• Add a value for SECRET_KEY. Just mash the keyboard for about 50 chars, should be good.

• Set ROOT_URLCONF to "pydj.urls"

• Add these items to the INSTALLED_APPS list:

  • django.contrib.admin
  • pydj.playlist
  • pydj.forum
  • django.contrib.markup

• Add all of the following directives and set them accordingly

  AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE

  Set this to "playlist.UserProfile"

  LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL

  set to "/playlist"

  LOGIN_URL

  set to "/login"

  TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

  Set this to:

  (
   "django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
   "django.core.context_processors.debug",
   "django.core.context_processors.i18n",
   "django.core.context_processors.media",
   "django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages",
   'playlist.context.listenersContextProcessor',
   'playlist.context.newReportsContextProcessor',
   'playlist.context.newEditsContextProcessor',
   'playlist.context.positionContextProcessor',
   'playlist.context.commentProcessor',
   'playlist.context.nowPlayingContextProcessor',
   'playlist.context.SQLLogContextProcessor',
   'playlist.context.siteContext',
   )
  

  IMAGES_DIR

  G2 is configured to serve static content itself out of this directory. Set this setting to the absolute path on the filesystem to the images directory, which is in the playlist directory.

  LOGIC_DIR

  Set this to the absolute path to the logic directory within the playlist directory. This is the ices working directory, and G2 looks in here for the ices.cue file

  SHOW_QUERIES

  Set this to False. You don't want this on.

  ICES_CONF

  Set this to the absolute path to your ices.conf file, which is usually in the logic directory. This settings is passed into "ices -c ICES_CONF", and just used to start ices from the admin panel

  STREAMINFO_URL

  Set this to the url of the shoutcast server. This url is queried and scraped for the listener count. Currently, this only works with icecast servers.

  NEXT_PASSWORD

  Set this to something random and secret. It's used for the ices streaming source to query G2 for the next song to play.

  MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE

  Set this to the maximum allowed upload size, in bytes.

  MAX_SONG_LENGTH

  Set this to the maximum allowed song length, in seconds. Longer songs may still be uploaded, but will be auto-banned.

  PLAYLIST_MAX

  Set this to the maximum number of songs each user can have in playlist at a time

  PLAYLIST_SOFT_TIME_LIMIT

  Set this to the maximum number of minutes a user can occupy on the playlist. This is a soft limit, they can add a song that exceeds this limit, but cannot add more songs after that. In other words, if their time on the playlist exceeds this value, they cannot add more songs.

  REPLAY_INTERVAL

  Set this to the time until a song can be added again, in hours

  IS_LIVE

  Doesn't do anything at the moment, but you still need to define it. Set to false, I guess.

  FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE

  Set this to 0

  SITE_TITLE

  Set to the site's title, which will be displayed in the page title on every page

  LISTEN_URL

  Set this to the URL that the Listen link should point to.

  DEAD_AIR_TRACK

  This is an absolute path on the filesysem to an mp3 that will play when otherwise nothing is playing. bees.mp3 is included in the logic directory as a default; set this option to its path.

Other directives, not documented yet

They're not strictly necessary for a working install, but may do something interesting. I haven't gotten around to documenting this yet

• ROOT_PATH
• LOG_LEVEL
• LOG_FILENAME
• FORUM_MAIL_PREFIX
• FORUM_MAIL_FROM
• DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL
• FTP_BASE_DIR

Post Config

Now that your settings.py is nice and configured, run

python manage.py syncdb

to populate the database. Create yourself an admin user when propmpted.

Now deploy the site with apache+mod_wsgi, or lighttpd, or the django built in server, or whatever. This is left as an excercise to the reader.

A wsgi file is provided under the apache directory.

Note: you may need to add some creative path additions to the top of some files. If you have custom paths to add, do so to these files:

• apache/django.wsgi
• manage.py
• playlist/ftp.py
• playlist/logic/ices.py

Database setup

Before you can use the site, a couple things need to be added to the database. Head to the admin site at /admin

• Go to the Settingss model and add a new settings with key welcome_message and whatever value.

• Go to the Song dirs model and add at least one usable song dir so G2 has somewhere to save the songs. The path should be an absolute path on the local filesystem to a writable directory to the web server.

  Hash letters is a number. If greater than 0, songs are put into sub directories named after this many hash letters from the song's hash. If you don't expect many songs, 0 is fine. Otherwise, 1 or 2 is a good choice. More just seems unnecessary to me, but be your own judge on that.

• Go to the Groups model and add a group for your listeners. At a minimum, this group should contain these permissions so listeners can view a functioning site:

  • Can view artist pages
  • Can add song to the playlist
  • Can view the playlist
  • Can upload songs
  • Can view user pages
  • Can view song pages

  You probably also want these permissions:

  • Can comment on songs
  • Can rate songs

Adding Users

Currently, adding users is a manual process. I stripped out the original Something Awful integrated login used at gbs.fm, but haven't added anything in its place.

To add a user, head to the admin page and follow these steps:

• Add a user to the Users model
  • Once added, go back to edit them into the Listeners group.
• Go to the User profiles model and add a new profile for that user.

Shoutcast/Icecast Setup

Set up a shotcast or icecast server. On ubuntu, these steps suffice:

• Install the package icecast2
• Edit /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml and change the passwords.
• Edit /etc/default/icecast2 to enable the service
• Start the service with sudo service icecast2 start

Icecast is now running on port 8000. Remember that, and the password you used for the next step.

ICES Setup

The web app is all set up, but you still need to get ices set up

• Download, compile, and install ices 0.4 (requires libshout-dev, libxml2-dev, libmp3lame-dev)
• Put the provided sample ices.conf and ices.py in the logic dir.
• Edit ices.py for the correct paths to the django project and the correct NEXT_URL
• Edit ices.conf
  • Set BaseDirectory to your logic directory
  • Make sure <Type> is python and <Module> is ices
  • Set the <Server> section appropriately for your shoutcast/icecast server. Make sure Protocol is set right, see the comments in the sample conf.
  • Set the <Name>, <Genre>, <Description>, and <URL> to whatever you want.
  • Make sure <Background> is 1
• Go to the g2admin page on the site, and press the start_stream link. This will launch ices.

If all works, things are now streaming! Otherwise, check the ices logs in the logic directory and the shoutcast/icecast logs for clues.

FTP Setup

• ftp.py is the ftp server
• Requires pyftpdlib to run (pip install)
• Edit paths as appropriate at the top. Needs to have pydj and playlist and playlist contents in path
• Edit FTP_BASE_DIR in settings.py to a writable directory for temporary storage of uploaded files
• Now run ftp.py. Try running in the background with nohup

Downloading Files

If a user has the "playlist.download_song" permission, they will have a link on each song page to download the file. This link depends on the webserver supporting the X-Sendfile header. For Apache, get the mod_xsendfile module.

For Ubuntu, you can install the libapache2-mod-xsendfile module. Make sure to turn it on in the server configuration with XSendFile On. If you get errors about the path being above the root, you can bypass the check with XSendFileAllowAbove On. (This option was removed in favor of XSendFilePath in 1.0, but Ubuntu still ships 0.9. See the documentation on XSendFile for more info)