This simple and brief tutorial is going to show you how to easily install Subsonic music streamer in Ubuntu Server and Desktop, using the ppa repository which supports Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, 12.10 Quantal, and 12.04 Precise.

subsonic

Subsonic is a web-based music streamer, jukebox and Podcast receiver, providing access to your music collection wherever you are. Use it to share your music with friends, or to listen to your music while away from home. A Subsonic client for Android phones is also available.

To install Subsonic (4.8) in Ubuntu, hit “Ctrl+Alt+T” to open terminal or login your Ubuntu Server, and run following commands one by one:

1. add the ppa repository by downloading and installing the DEB:

wget http://archive.getdeb.net/install_deb/getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb

2. update app repository:

sudo apt-get update

3. install Subsonic:

sudo apt-get install subsonic

Once installed. You can confirm this by browsing to http://ubuntu-machine-IP:4040 or http://hostname:4040

Subsonic

By default Subsonic runs as root in Ubuntu, if you’d like to start the service as special user, do following steps:

1. In terminal, get the root:

sudo su

then stop the service:

service subsonic stop

2. Let’s now create the new user that we will use to run our Subsonic service. In this case it’s “subsonic”:

adduser --system --no-create-home subsonic

add the subsonic user to audio group:

adduser subsonic audio

3. Change some permissions to make sure my subsonic service will run without any problems:

chown -R subsonic:nogroup /tmp/subsonic
chown -R subsonic:nogroup /var/subsonic
chown -R root:root /var/subsonic/transcode
chown -R root:root /var/subsonic/jetty/*/webapp
chown subsonic /etc/default/subsonic
chmod 754 /etc/default/subsonic

4. Finally edit subsonic configuration with your favorite editor and change the line “SUBSONIC_USER=root” to “SUBSONIC_USER=subsonic”.

5. Start the service again:

sudo service subsonic restart

Enjoy!