How to get MPD working in Ubuntu 11.10 (fixed)

This is my little how-to file on getting MPD to finally goddamn work.

For reference, I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit, using PulseAudio.

-   First step, make sure you've got mpd, mpc and pavucontrol installed.

-   Second, copy /etc/mpd.conf to ~/.mpdconf

-   Create a ~/.mpd directory.  Inside that directory, create the files mpd.log,
    mpd.pid, mpdstate and mpddb.  You could probably name mpddb something else.
    The command I used was 'touch {mpddb,mpd.log,mpd.pid,mpdstate}'

-   Create a playlist directory.  I created mine in ~/audio/mp3/playlists, but
    you could just as easily (as well as perhaps more appropriately) create
    yours in ~/.mpd/playlists.

-   I'm not sure if this is necessary, as I did this before I commented out the
    relevant line in mpdconf.  Regardless, if things don't work otherwise, give
    it a shot:  If you're using a firewall/router, make sure you're forwarding
    port 6600 for mpd.  My machine's on 192.168.1.104, so I did it for that IP
    address.

-   Editing .mpdconf:  Most things in the conf file can be left alone.  There
    are a few things that need to be changed, however.  Open ~/.mpdconf in your
text editor of choice and change the music_directory, playlist_directory,
db_file, log_file, pid_file and state_file settings to their appropriate
settings.  music_directory might be /home/YOU/Music, for instance.  If you've
been following this text, then log_file (for example) would be in
'/home/YOU/.mpd/mpd.log'.

Make sure everything is commented out as you scroll down, until you get to the
Input section.  Mine was uncommented by default, so I just left it as-is.  The
exceptions being (and I can't quite remember 100%) the sections related to
binding an address and what user MPD should run as.  Make sure those are
commented out.

Scroll a little further to the Audio Output section.  Comment out the ALSA
section (all of it) and scroll down to the PulseAudio example.  Uncomment the
line with 'audio_output {', as well as the two below it.  The lines with
'server' and 'sink' can stay commented.  Uncomment the closing bracket and
you're good.  Here's what my section looks like:


audio_output {
        type            "pulse"
        name            "MPD"
#       server          "remote_server"         # optional
#       sink            "remote_server_sink"    # optional
}


After that, scroll down to the Volume control mixer settings.  You can leave
this alone if you want, but I prefer to uncomment the software mixter_type line.
This lets you adjust the volume with mpc.

And now... you're done!  There are a couple of other misc options (character
encoding, etc.), but I just leave those alone.


-   Run mpd.  Just typing 'mpd' should do the trick.  It'll crunch some numbers
    for a few seconds while it's populating your database with songs from the
    directory you supplied in .mpdconf.  It might give you some guff about
    'corrupt database' or something.  Just ignore that.

-   After it stops eating your CPU, see if mpc works.  Try 'mpc listall'.  If it
    lists some stuff, the battle's almost won.  Now you need to add some of
    these things to a playlist.

-   To find an artist's songs, type 'mpc find artist <artist>'.  For example, to
    find Radiohead songs, type mpc find artist Radiohead.  To find and add these
    to a playlist at the same time, type mpc findadd artist Radiohead.

-   Type mpc play.  It should start playing music now, though you probably won't
    hear anything.  If you do:  awesome.  If you're like me, you need to run
'pavucontrol', look in the Playback tab, make sure it's showing Applications
(drop-down menu near the bottom of the window), and adjust the Music Play Daemon
section.  What I had to do was click the box next to the little volume meter for
that channel, and select 'Internal Audio Analog Stereo', though you might need
to pick something else.

And now... you should hear the music playing.  Congratulations, you're done.

Check 'man mpc' to get an idea of the other commands and how to manipulate
playlists.  I'm still new to this myself, so I barely know what I'm doing.