I heart LogitechMediaServer (LMS).  What is it?  It is a streaming music platform.  Back in the day it was among the first of the internet radio platforms.

Now we have Sonos.  Nothing wrong with Sonos if you are rich.  Big money for crappy sound.

Logitech made a line of “Squeezebox” devices such as the Touch and Radio, etc.  You can still find the same things basically with Sonos and Grace Digital Internet Radio.

LogitechMediaServer abandoned its hardware stake some years ago and now the software is community maintained and Open Source.

So you can essentially run the same streaming services FOR FREE and your clients can be small, low powered devices such as Raspberry Pi or essentially any computer you have.

So I install LMS (with the S meaning SERVER) on a Raspberry Pi and a music PLAYER called Squeezelite.  The newer Pi’s such as the Pi 3 or Pi 4 work pretty good but with some heavy use and network traffic you might experience a slight hiccup or two because of the relatively low CPU power and memory of a Pi.

Let’s move our LMS SERVER off the Pi and onto our REAL server.  I use Unraid at my house.   This blog won’t be a full installation blog but rather the “gotcha” I experienced.

Generally it is pretty easy to install an app in Unraid.   You install the Community Applications Plugin then do a search for LogitechMediaServer.  I used “latest” from Snoopy86.  But when I installed it, it wouldn’t start.  Then when it started it wouldn’t find any of my network PLAYERS.

So there are two issues.  Both can be resolved in one place.  Click on your docker and Select “EDIT”.  You may not experience this but it told me port 5353 was used by something else which prevented the docker from starting.  I changed the port number to 5354.  BAM!  It started.

And while it was on the network it couldn’t find any of my Squeezelite players on the network.  It should have.  It didn’t.   The default Network Type was “BRIDGE”.  By changing the network type from BRIDGE to HOST it found the network players.  Success!

LMS configuration on Unraid Docker (click pics to enlarge)

As you can see it found my network players “Home Audio” and “Squeezebox Radio”.  I have more but they aren’t turned on right now.

So now the resource hungry SERVER lives on a big bad super fast Unraid server and the Pi’s that are hooked to my audio systems only have to run a PLAYER which is NOT resource hungry.  No more hiccups.

This is Sonos at a FRACTION of the cost.