[Icecast] Ices with perl playlist - multiple instances

[James McCurrach]

Hello,

I'd like to be able to run multiple instances of Ices (2.0), each with
their own playlist and streaming to different mountpoints.

Although I'm relatively new to Ices and Icecast, so far I have had
little trouble getting it running with two or more instances of Ices
feeding off fixed playlists (files).

I'd like to be able to set each instance of Ices to run with script
based playlists (there are plenty of perl modules etc which do this
well), with the playlist itself in the form of a table in a MySQL
database.

viz:

        mount #1         mount #2
             |                    |
             --------|-------
                   icecast (2.0)
             --------|-------.............. as many channels as I want
             |                    |
          ices #1            ices #2
             |                     |
          next file            next file
             |                     |
             --------|--------..............
                        |
                   perl script
                        |
                    MySQL table
                     (file name)
                     (stream #)
                     (play order)

The problem is that I can't see how to get Ices to send some form of
parameter to the perl script so that it knows which instance is calling
it and can then pull the right next track filename from the DB.  There
is the pidfile option in the config.xml, so that as I invoke each Ices
instance I can capture the pid (for signalling etc) but how can I pass
this pid or other identifier to the perl script?

Apologies in advance if this has already been dealt with, but I couldn't
find it in the archives.

Thanks,

James