[Icecast] Dynamic Playlist

[Michael Smith]

>
> 1. Despite the 0 setting for my "restart-after-reread" parameter, anytime I
> manually update my playlist file, my playlist starts over again. Though
> "random", I know this is happening because I soon hear tracks again that
> I've recently heard. Is there something I can do to prevent this from
> happening?

First up: random is misnamed, as it's not intended to be truly random.
Instead, it shuffles the list: this means that normally, you can't
hear the same thing until it has reached the end of the shuffled list.

However, when the list is re-read, it's also re-shuffled.
restart-after-reread is correctly used, but does roughly nothing in
this case.

>
> 2. The "random" parameter doesn't seem to produce particularly random
> selections, meaning that ices2 seems to work its way down my playlist in a
> somewhat predictable fashion. Each time I restart ices2 I hear (more or
> less) the same general sequence of tracks played. Is this to be expected?

The shuffle should be completely random. If it isn't... there's a bug
somewhere. Perhaps your system does have a very random rand()
function? Perhaps we should use a better RNG  in ices.

>
> 3. Does anyone know if there's a command line, MySQL-based playlist manager
> for ices2? I'd love to be able to manage my playlists and ID3 tag info using
> a database interface. I'd also like to be able to easily serve up customized
> playlist's through ices2 in a manner similar to what I currently use NetJuke
> for, but to do this requires a database. Any thoughts?
>

You can hook this into IceS2 using the 'script' playlist module, but I
don't know if anyone has written an appropriate script to speak to
mysql. I haven't, personally.

Mike