DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 743, 18 December 2017

Feature Story (by Jesse Smith)

Daphile 17.09 Daphile is a minimal Linux distribution which is designed to be run on a computer dedicated to playing music. Daphile can be run on headless machines and its media controls are managed through a web-based interface. Basically, Daphile is intended to be run on a computer we can stick in the corner of a room and use it as a media centre without worrying about managing software, tweaking settings or navigating desktop environments. Daphile can be run from a CD or USB thumb drive for maximum portability and does not need to be installed directly on a hard drive to work.



Daphile reportedly has the ability to rip audio CDs, play audio files from a local drive or stream music across network shares (Samba, NFS, FTP and OpenSSH services are supported). This gives us a pretty good range of media sources for our music collection.



Under the hood, Daphile has its roots in Gentoo, though the operating system is somewhat stripped down and we cannot use Gentoo's package management utilities. Daphile runs the Busybox userland tools and a light web server, and very little else. In fact, Daphile does not provide a login interface to allow us to tinker with the operating system. The operating system is dedicated entirely to the task of playing music and our sole access to the media controls are through its web interface.



The distribution is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds and the ISO file we download for Daphile is 195MB in size. While Daphile is capable of running entirely without a screen, when we do boot from Daphile's media the distribution displays the distribution's IP address, which it obtains over DHCP. We can connect to the IP address using any modern web browser which automatically gives us access to Daphile's media controls, there is no user authentication built into the web interface.



Features and options



Daphile's web-based interface has six screens offering us storage options, network settings and player controls. There is the Audio Player screen where we can browse through our music collection, create playlists and play audio files. There is a CD Ripper page for copying audio from a music CD onto a local drive. The File Manager page helps us upload and download audio files. Uploading files can be achieved with dragging and dropping files into the web browser or using an upload dialogue to select specific files to send to the Daphile box.





Daphile 17.09 -- The distribution's audio player

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The fourth screen is labeled Settings and handles a variety of options. Through the Settings page for can adjust networking settings and connect to remote file shares. The fifth page provides information on the operating system and its status. The sixth and final page controls shutting down and rebooting the computer where Daphile is running.



Observations



One characteristic of Daphile which I think is important is the distribution plays audio through the speakers of the computer it is running on. Some dedicated audio systems are set up to play audio through the web browser of a client machine, they're essentially streaming servers that send audio to our devices, wherever we are. Daphile plays its music locally, not through the client's web browser. Daphile is meant to be used as a livingroom entertainment centre rather than a streaming server.





Daphile 17.09 -- Uploading audio files from the File Manager screen

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The biggest issue I had with Daphile was getting it to access my audio files. At first I intended to use the distribution's ability to access remote network shares to access my music collection stored on a separate device. However, I was unable to get Daphile to connect over Samba, FTP or OpenSSH connections. I suspect this is because Daphile would not accept new configuration changes. Whenever I tried to save new settings the distribution reported it was running from read-only media. This happened whether running Daphile from a CD or USB thumb drive. Since the distribution is not designed to be installed on a hard drive, I was surprised it could not write to its own USB drive. This is a very severe limitation and means we are restricted when it comes to changing settings or accessing any remote music collections.



I also ran into trouble trying to get Daphile to recognize music on my own, local hard drive. For some reason, the distribution failed to read folders on my laptop's internal drive. The only way I could get Daphile to recognize and play music was to use the File Manager screen's Upload function and upload files a few at a time.



Hardware



I mostly played with Daphile on a laptop computer. When I first started using the laptop, Daphile booted, but of course could not connect to my wireless network as it did not know the password and I was using the laptop as if it were a headless box, just placed on a shelf in the livingroom. I was pleased to discover Daphile would automatically set up a wireless hotspot if it could not connect to a local network. This allows other computers in the area to connect to the laptop wirelessly using the laptop as its own access point. The only downside to this approach is connecting devices need to choose between connecting to Daphile's wireless hotspot or the regular LAN & Internet, or switch back and forth. The default hotspot password for Daphile can be found in the distribution's FAQ document.





Daphile 17.09 -- The system information screen

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If we do not like the idea of using a wireless hotspot to work with Daphile, we can press the F1 key when booting the distribution and a configuration screen will appear. The distribution's configuration wizard lets us select our preferred language, select a wireless network to talk to and we can provide a wi-fi password. We will also be asked to provide our network's gateway address and the IP address of a DNS server, so it's best to have these on hand if we want to operate Daphile over a secured wireless connection.



Conclusions



When I first started using Daphile, I appreciated the project's focus. The distribution has one task in mind: playing music on a dedicated computer, and any tools, software or services which do not aid in that task have been stripped out of the operating system. Daphile is very lightweight and runs on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 computers, meaning we can turn an old PC collecting dust into a media player.



I really like the wireless hotspot feature mentioned above. Daphile goes out of its way to get us on-line and will work over a wired, wireless or hotspot connection. These options are explored automatically by the operating system at boot time and this flexibility is part of what lets Daphile work as a headless media box.



There were two problems I ran into during my trial. The first was I could not get Daphile to work with most of my existing media collections. I sort of expected problems when trying to access file shares on remote computers, but Daphile also failed to recognize local audio files on my laptop's hard drive. I think this problem arises from Daphile not being able to write new settings to its own USB thumb drive. This issue does not appear to be addressed in the project's FAQ or wiki.





Daphile 17.09 -- Trying to access network storage

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I was able to work around the settings problem by simply uploading music through the distribution's web interface. This presented me with my second problem and that is I feel the Daphile audio player interface is overly complicated for what it does. Ideally, I think all music should be organized in one logical location with all songs (stored locally or remotely) in one location. But the web-based player separates remote and local files. Local files are further separated into hard drives and RAM storage. And then there are separate folders under these locations. To browse music I may need to go as many as four levels deep, if I don't have music further organized into sub-folders. This in itself isn't a big problem, browsing for music is not difficult, but it is an example of what I see as the overall problem with Daphile as a solution: it's too much solution for my problem.



From my point of view, if I already have a computer in the house which is capable of running a web browser, then it makes more sense to use that computer to play music directly. Using one computer to talk to another to play music on the second computer feels redundant and I have not come up with a scenario where having a second, audio-only box makes sense when it needs to be controlled from another computer's browser. If I want entertainment, it is easier for me set up my laptop on a table, login to its guest account and put Rhythmbox in its full screen “party mode”. Rhythmbox will show all my music on one page, offer the same search features, have an interface that is more familiar to guests, take less time to configure to see all my music and I won't even need a network connection. I won't need a separate computer to access the media controls either, I'll be able to work with volume and player controls directly on the machine.



Daphile does what it claims on the project's website - plays music, has a friendly web interface and can work over a variety of networks. This is all great and I am happy the project has achieved its goals. For me personally, the distribution's solution of turning a computer into a remotely managed audio player is more complicated than using that same computer to run a desktop operating system with an audio player. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following specifications: Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU

Display: Intel integrated video

Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast

Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



Daphile has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.4/10 from 9 review(s).

Have you used Daphile? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.





Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith)

Slax improves wireless support, a cutting-edge spin of antiX, SparkyLinux runs on Raspberry Pi computers, Fedora's Modular Server delayed Slax, which was formerly based on Slackware, is a Debian-based distribution and live CD. When the new Debian-based Slax was launched some users pointed out missing wireless support and a lack of non-free items. These missing components are being addressed in the next version of the Slax distribution. " I noticed that Debian has updated to 9.3.0 so it's time to update Slax too. I plan to release updates with each minor Debian release, if there are any bug fixes or changes (in Slax) at that moment. Currently I've implemented these changes: added wireless tools; added firmware (free and non-free); added contrib and non-free repositories; fixed apt-get alias parameters handling. " More details and the project's to-do list can be found in the project's blog post. * * * * * The antiX project has released new network install ISO images based on Debian's Unstable (Sid) branch. A post on the project's News page reports: " For those of you that want to live on the wild side of Debian and basically start out from scratch, antiX has provided Sid-based net images for you. You will need a wired connection since no firmware is included. This is for experts or for those that want to learn and are prepared to search for solutions to any possible issues. " The new net-install images carry the version number 17.1 and can be downloaded from SourceForge. * * * * * The Debian-based SparkyLinux distribution, famous for featuring a wide range of development branches and editions, is further expanding its download options. SparkyLinux's Stable branch is now available for Raspberry Pi computers. There are two editions of SparkyLinux's Raspberry Pi build, one which features the Openbox graphical interface and one which presents a command line only. The distribution's website states: " Sparky 4.7 armhf for Raspberry Pi is out now. Sparky of the 4.x line is based on the stable branch of Debian 9 'Stretch'. This release is available in two versions: Openbox - with a small set of applications and CLI - text based. " Further details and login credentials for the default accounts can be found in the distribution's announcement. * * * * * Fedora 27 Workstation, and the Fedora Project's many other spins, were released back in November 2017. One edition of the distribution which was held back at the time was the new Fedora Modular Server. The Modular Server edition was designed to replace Fedora's classic Server edition and offered a significant new feature: " Once all of the planned content is in place, Modularity will allow users to choose different streams of runtimes and applications, allowing base operating system updates without disruption to workloads. "



The Modular Server edition has run into setbacks however and is going back to the drawing board. In its place, a classic edition of Fedora 27 Server is being made available. " You may remember reading about plans for Fedora 27 Server. The working group decided not to release that at the same time as the general F27 release, and instead provided a beta of Fedora 27 Modular Server. Based on feedback from that beta, they decided to take a different approach, and the Modularity subproject is going back to the drawing board. Fortunately, there is a contingency plan: Fedora's release engineering team made a 'classic' version of Fedora 27 Server - very similar to F26 Server, but with F27's updated package set. The quality assurance [team] ran this version through validation testing, and it's being released. " Fedora 27 Server can be downloaded from the Get Fedora Download page. * * * * * These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.





Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith)

Tools for rescuing the operating system and data files There are a lot of open source tools available to help us when things go wrong and we suddenly need to rescue our personal files or even our computer's entire operating system. When a computer stops working correctly, one of the first problems we tend to face is it can be difficult to know which of the dozens of utilities is the right one for the current job. A utility which will help us boot our computer when the boot loader has been corrupted is great, but will not be much help when we want to recover a deleted file. Likewise, a program that rescues deleted files will not help us if what we want to do is clone a partition. This week we provide a quick overview of some useful recovery utilities and the situations where they can be of the most help.



Recovering deleted files



One of my favourite rescue utilities is PhotoRec. PhotoRec is often bundled as part of the TestDisk package in Linux distributions. The PhotoRec program can search through a disk or partition and find deleted files, saving those files to another location. PhotoRec recognizes most types of files and works with virtually every type of file system. The utility works across most major operating systems, including Linux distributions, the BSDs, Windows and macOS.



One of the features of PhotoRec I like most is the utility guides the user through the recovery steps. We just need to tell PhotoRec which partition to search for files and the program then guides us through answering a few questions about what we are searching for. At that point, chances are if any part of our missing file is still on the disk, PhotoRec will find it and create a copy in the folder of our choosing.



Cloning a hard drive or partition



When we have accidentally deleted a file or discovered our hard drive is dying, one of the best things we can do is stop using the disk. The more we use a hard drive once things start to go wrong, the worse things are likely to become. For this reason it helps to work with a copy (also called an image) of the drive or partition where things got messed up. There are many utilities which will clone a hard drive or disk partition for later examination, but my favourite of the bunch is Clonezilla Live. Clonezilla runs from a CD or USB thumb drive and uses a wizard to guide us through selecting which drive (or partition) to backup. Clonezilla will then save the selected partition to a variety of locations, including Samba shares, OpenSSH servers or another connected disk. Clonezilla is very flexible and its curses-based wizard is very straight forward to use.



Clonezilla Live can work in reverse too, restoring a clone of a hard drive back to its original location, or copying the disk/partition to a new device. When I am trying to recover files, one of the first tools I use is Clonezilla to get a snapshot of the partition I will be rescuing.



Managing disk partitions



Also on the subject of working with disk partitions, I like working with GParted Live. GParted Live is a minimal, live Linux distribution which basically exists to run the GParted graphical partition manager. If you need to create, delete, resize or re-format disk partitions, GParted is probably the easiest point-n-click tool for getting the job done.



Corrupted boot loader



One of my least favourite situations to try to recover from is rescuing a system where the boot loader is no longer working. Usually this can be fixed by booting a live disc, creating a chroot environment and re-installing the boot loader. However, there are several steps involved in this kind of rescue and sometimes our priority is to just get our main operating system back on-line quickly. For these situations there is Super Grub2 Disk. Super Grub2 Disk is a live CD which can be used to boot operating systems, even when the GRUB boot loader has been corrupted or overwritten. Super Grub2 Disk is not a full operating system, it just gives us the tools to boot our existing, on-disk operating system so we can start making repairs. This may be easier or faster than trying to repair the operating system from a separate, live disc environment.



System recovery and resetting passwords



A good, general purpose tool to have is Rescatux. While the other utilities on this list accomplish specific tasks, Rescatux is more of a general purpose utility. It can help recover a boot loader that has been over-written by Windows, reset passwords, repair a damaged sudoers authentication file and perform file system checks. Rescatux has a nice, graphical wizard to help us get started with these tasks.



Preventing disaster



The above tools are all great resources for when things have already gone wrong, but I also recommend taking proactive steps to make system recovery easier. Having regular and frequent file backups is always useful. We do not need to scramble to undelete an erased file if we have a daily backup of our important data. I also recommend using file systems or package managers which support snapshots. Btrfs and ZFS are file systems which support taking snapshots of the operating system and our data files, allowing us to recover from most scenarios short of hardware failure. The Nix package manager creates snapshots of packages in case an update breaks the operating system and we want to revert to an earlier set of packages. These tools can save us a lot of time and effort as a file is easier to get back through an on-disk snapshot than through a recovery tool. * * * * * More tips can be found in our Tips and Tricks archive.





Released Last Week

FreeNAS 11.1



Joon Lee has announced the release of FreeNAS 11.1, an updated release of the project's specialist FreeBSD-based operating system designed for computers providing Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services. This version updates the base system to FreeBSD 11.1: " The FreeNAS development team is excited and proud to present FreeNAS 11.1. FreeNAS 11.1 adds cloud integration, OpenZFS performance improvements, including the ability to prioritize re-silvering operations, and preliminary Docker support to the world's most popular software-defined storage operating system. This release includes an updated preview of the beta version of the new administrator graphical user interface, including the ability to select display themes. The base operating system has been updated to the STABLE version of FreeBSD 11.1, which adds new features, updated drivers, and the latest security fixes. Support for Intel Xeon Scalable Family processors, AMD Ryzen processors, and HBA 9400-91 has been added. " See the full release announcement for more details and a screenshot of the improved administration interface.



TrueOS 17.12



TrueOS is an open source operating system based on FreeBSD's development branch. TrueOS provides a rolling release platform featuring the Lumina desktop environment and the OpenRC service manager. The project's latest snapshot, version 17.12, includes LibreSSL in the base system (replacing OpenSSL), Bhyve virtual machine support, and the latest drivers supplied by FreeBSD's 12.0-CURRENT branch. " Notable changes: Over 1,100 OpenRC services have been created for 3rd-party packages. This should unsure the functionality of nearly all available 3rd-party packages that install/use their own services. The OpenRC services for FreeBSD itself have been overhauled, resulting in significantly shorter boot times. Separate install images for desktops and servers (server image uses a text/console installer). Bhyve support for TrueOS Server install. FreeBSD base is synced with 12.0-CURRENT as of December 4th, 2017. FreeBSD ports tree is synced as of November 30th. Lumina Desktop has been updated/developed from 1.3.0 to 1.4.1. PCDM now supports multiple simultaneous graphical sessions. " Additional changes and a list of key package versions can be found in the project's release announcement.



Linux Mint 18.3 "KDE", "Xfce"



The Linux Mint team has released two new editions of the project's Ubuntu-based series. The project's new offerings include editions for the KDE and Xfce desktop environments. Both new releases are part of the project's larger 18.3 release which already features Cinnamon and MATE editions. Along with support for Flatpak packages and a new snapshot tool called Timeshift, Linux Mint ships with a tool called System Reports which can gather key information to help trouble-shoot problems. " When a crash occurs, information is now gathered and a crash report is generated. The System Reports tool lists the crashes and is able to generate stack traces for them. When developers aren't able to reproduce a bug, that information is very useful. It's always been very difficult for non-experienced users to produce core dumps or stack traces. This tool helps a lot with that. In addition to crash reports, the tool is also able to show information reports. Unlike the release notes which show the same generic information to everybody, information reports are targeted at particular users, particular hardware, particular cases. Each report is able to detect its own relevance based on your environment, the desktop you're using, your CPU, your graphic cards, etc. " These pieces of information can be forwarded to the project's developers to help them fix bugs. Further information on Linux Mint 18.3 can be found in the release announcements (KDE, Xfce).



MX Linux 17



The MX team has announced the release of MX Linux 17, a lightweight distribution based on Debian and featuring the Xfce desktop environment. The new release is based on Debian 9.3 and ships with Xfce 4.12. " This release feature the following: 4.13.0-1 kernels for both 32-bit and 64-bit ISOs (yes, we still have 32-bit!) The 32-bit ISO has a PAE kernel for RAM usage above 4GB. Easily change kernels, say to the latest Liquorix kernel or downgrade to Debian Stable kernel (4.9) with MX Package Installer. The latest updates from Debian (Stretch) 9.3 and Xfce 4.12.3. All the antiX live features, including persistence (up to 20GB) and remaster tools. Automatic selection of appropriate driver for most Broadcom chipsets (in most cases, no user intervention required). " Further details, an overview of the custom MX tools and key package versions can be found in the distribution's release announcement.





MX Linux 17 -- Running the Xfce desktop

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* * * * * Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases

BlackArch Linux 2017.12.11

LinHES 8.5.1

Fedora 27 "Server"

Slax 9.3-beta2

Q4OS 2.4-r4

antiX 17.1 "net"

NuTyX 9.93

Manjaro Linux 17.1-rc1

Torrent Corner

Upcoming Releases and Announcements

Opinion Poll

Dedicated computer for media playing



In this week's Feature Story we talked about Daphile, a Linux distribution which turns a personal computer into a dedicated audio player. We would like to find out how many of our readers have personal computers dedicated exclusively to playing media, such as audio or video files. Do you have a workstation, laptop or Raspberry Pi set up to exclusively be a media box? Let us know about your setup in the comments.



You can see the results of our previous poll on using privacy-focused distributions in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.



Dedicated computer for media playing



I have a dedicated media desktop/laptop: 380 (22%) I have a dedicated media console: 87 (5%) I use media appliances (CD/DVD/record player): 207 (12%) Other: 102 (6%) I do not have a dedicated media system: 979 (56%)