24 Hours with Volumio...

Volumio Development Bug reports
1

Hi,

First of all, I like Volumio, the interface and the functionality. However, there seem to be a number of bugs and it would be nice if they could be addressed:

  • Out of the box, Airplay works
  • I am changing Output to the Pi-DigiAMP+
  • I am not connecting to my WiFi network but stick with my wired DHCP connection
  • When clicking done, I am getting the following message:

which is strange, because the music is already playing

  • I am pressing ‘Restart’ and after a while, the system is back online

The majority of my network however is based on static IPs. Now, I have to change that around…

  • I am clicking on Network and setting Automatic IP to off
  • I am entering my Static IP, Netmask and Gateway
  • I am surprised to find that DNS Settings is a separate item as I would expect to have one DNS Setting for wired and one for wireless
  • Anyway, I am clicking on Save for my Static IP
  • I am getting a message, that the network was restarted successfully
  • However, it seems, that the whole volumio has crashed, no more music, no startup sound, neither dhcp nor static IP addresses show up in network scans
  • Hard reset
  • Airplay is available again
  • Setting Custom DNS Server, clicking Save
  • Airplay disappears and volumio crashes again and disappears from the network
  • Guess what: Hard reset
  • There is the happy startup sound and volumio shows up in the Airplay list
  • Now I want to deactivate WiFi as anyone surfing on my network has to access it via my routers. I am going to network and am switching Wireless Networking Off and click on Save.
  • It’s so deja vu: Volumio crashes and it’s a Hard reset
  • Startup sound and Airplay is working
  • Now, I want to change the name from volumio into ‘streamer’
  • I popped into System, changed the name and clicked Save
  • The new name briefly showed up and then disappeared.
  • Changing the name back to ‘Volumio’ forces it to appear under the Airplay list again
  • I changed it back to my desired name, and it disappeared after a short while
  • Back to ‘Volumio’. This time, it didn’t re-appear in Airplay. Only a restart made it re-appear

I reinstalled a clean Volumio SD card about 15 times with all sorts of different trial and errors…

Conclusion: Having to do hard resets after simple changes in the network configuration is very surprising and unexpected. Would be good to iron out these issues. I am equally surprised about the arbitrary behaviour of Airplay. The fact that it’s just disappearing leads me to think that there is another issue with the underlying network implementation.

I tried a number of different suggestions to hook up my iTunes library from a server, but didn’t get anywhere. Given that iTunes libraries are pretty common, it would be great to officially support this or provide an uptodate guide.

Happy to help or provide you with more infos if needed.

FYI: I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 with an IQaudIO Pi-DigiAMP+. No peripherals attached (have not managed to…)

2

To continue with my comments:

  • Stretch would be nice as doing a OS upgrade on an existing installation is always risky and this would extent the Debian support by another year
  • I experimented with various guides on how to mount an iTunes shared directory with no success (using High Sierra). Installing streaming server software is not an option. More guidance would be appreciated. Maybe post a ‘how-to guide’?

Again, happy to assist.

3

Thanks for your long and compelling feedback.
I agree that you should not have to hard reset your Volumio when you change those settings, this is something we’re trying to fix those glitches since long time… I would love to hear more feedbacks as you progress they are very useful

4

I won’t be able to look at the installation for the next two weeks. However, here are a few suggestions from memory:

  • I looked at the dhcpcd.conf file after changes had been made and noticed, that volumio uses quite a lot of additional parameters. When I look at my static dhcpcd.conf files, they are pretty much barebones and work. Maybe sift through and see if all the items are absolutely necessary.
  • If changes are made to the network configuration, usually a restart is needed to make them active. It seems that volumio is trying to reload them without a restart. I would simply go for the restart here. Nobody will mind.
  • Make DNS configuration two separate items for wired and wireless networking. E.g. in one instance, volumio hung after changing the wired parameters but then didn’t have the right DNS servers. I managed to correct it with SSH-ing in and changing the dhcpcd.conf file.
  • Just as good security practice, out of the box, I would disable the hot-spot feature but give the user the option as part of the ‘first-run’ to enable it (and set a strong password).

More to follow in a couple of weeks’ time.