Can't connect to ShairPlay when backgrounding it or opening it via init.d

[DanielSmedegaardBuus]

Hi :)

I tried the init.d example script posted here (minor mods), and discovered that it'll start and stop shairplay correctly — I can see the process running with the right arguments — but I won't be able to connect to it from my MacBook (It still shows up on the network, though, selecting it just does nothing).

If I stop the service and start shairplay in a shell manually with the exact same arguments, it'll work perfectly.

The same problem arises if I use that same shairplay shell command, but background it with '&'. It'll run, but I won't be able to connect.

I also don't see the usual stdout log, so I'm thinking perhaps there's some bug in shairplay that surfaces when it no longer can write to an interactive terminal?

Cheers, Daniel :)

[juhovh]

Hmm, I can connect to shairplay if it is running in background with '&', but I only tested on Mac OS X... I wonder what is the reason for that. It wouldn't hurt if shairplay could truly daemonize itself though, but I haven't had time for that so far.

[DanielSmedegaardBuus]

Not sure why either.

Backgrounding is fine, so long as the shell that launched shairplay is open (and attached to a stdout of some kind, it seems).

I worked around it by starting it in a screen shell via rc.local. Not pretty, but it works:

# Don't run multiple instances - start just one screen, named "shairplay":
[[ $(screen -list | grep shairplay) == '' ]] &&
    screen -dmS shairplay sh
# Keep shairplay perpetually running. When it crashes, we can just SIGKILL it, and it comes back:
[[ $(ps aux | grep -v grep | grep pts | grep '/usr/bin/shairplay') == '' ]] &&
    screen -S shairplay -p 0 -X stuff "while true; do /usr/bin/shairplay --apname=Airamaplay --ao_devicename=default; sleep 2s; done
"

That trailing quote on a newline isn't a typo — it's a newline so the command is executed inside screen.

[juhovh]

That is quite hackish. :) I should probably try on some different systems and see if I get the same problem.

[DanielSmedegaardBuus]

Hehe :D

Cool! Let me know if I can help :)

[cyberhiker]

I was having similar issues. I've posted my /etc/init.d/shairplay and /etc/default/shairplay here: https://gist.github.com/cyberhiker/9b60b1115e250a597c3f

[juhovh]

Unfortunately these are a bit outdated since everything is systemd now...