bliss works on Raspberry Pi 2!
March 03, 2015 in bliss by Luke Szy
This week, a guest post by bliss user, Raspberry Pi assembler and all-round 'maker' Luke Szy:
Up until now I have been running bliss on a Windows desktop to correct my entire music collection first and then transfer all the music on to my music server (a Raspberry Pi based Logitech media server; see my blog for details): http://www.ls-homeprojects.co.uk
As I recently upgraded my music server to the new Raspberry Pi 2 quad core, I thought: "What if the Linux release of bliss worked on this Raspberry Pi?" To my amazement it runs!!!
I followed the Linux installation instructions.
Here's how I managed it:
- Boot the Raspberry Pi 2 into the desktop
- Download the installation JAR file for bliss
- Install
- Run
startx
Or, from a shell
$ cd /home/pi $ wget https://www.blisshq.com/downloads/bliss-install-20150109.jar
Note: the version number will change over time. You can find the latest version by reviewing all of the bliss releases.
Open a new shell window. As always is good to update the Pi first:
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get upgrade
Install the JAR
sudo java -jar bliss-install-20150109.jar
Now a graphical install wizard will appear follow all steps to install
When finished you should have a shortcut appear in the start menu !
Use the Start Menu shortcut or run:
sudo /home/pi/bliss/bin/bliss.sh
Current limitations
Although bliss runs and seems to sort my music just fine there're a few error messages and functions that don't work correctly such as automatic new file discovery.
This basically means bliss won't just address only new files placed in the folder; it will rescan everything. Also start and stop buttons seem temperamental. These limitations are not bad keeping in mind that this software was never designed on a ARM based system such as the Raspberry Pi.
A future version of bliss will hopefully support file notifications on ARM platforms. We currently use a separate open source project to do this, but more modern versions of Java include this "for free" so implementation should not be difficult (he says) - Dan.
Conclusion
I'm very happy how bliss runs on my music server without the need to use my desktop . Ok, performance isn't as fast as my PC but it is not too bad and makes me wonder if this is due to the errors caused by running on an ARM system. bliss is not run all the time but just when required. Any questions, contact me through my blog!
Thanks to Savannah River Site for the image above.
