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If someone more knowledgeable than I could indulge me...
Now that the upstream perl audioscan code has been fixed/made compatible with the recent perl v5.42 release and all we logitechmediaserver fans can regrow our hair, what's the best way to mitigate future similar problems? We've always had these issues with LMS/perl, but I've never known them take so long to resolve. The developers' suggestion that a load of archlinux advocates move to debian stable is one of the funniest things I've ever read on a message board.
Would it be reasonable to just lock perl 5.42 in /etc/pacman.conf and keep an eye on whether future perl updates cripple LMS again? And in doing this, will the system automatically and quietly restrict all other package updates that would depend on an updated perl?
Also, I'm surprised that I'm unable to find a proper objective explanation of the move from logitechmediaserver to lyrionmusicserver. I've read in a few places "it's nothing but a name change to reflect the closure of mysqueezebox.com", but that happened 30 months ago, and if it's that simple why are both packages still in development? I'm not against migrating. I just don't understand why I need to. Has anyone had any problems in doing so?
EDIT:
I wrote too soon. The upstream patch has been applied to the lyrionmusicserver but not to the logitechmediaserver.
From the logitechmediaserver AUR page...
"This is now fixed upstream, i.e. slimserver-vendor 9.1 works with Perl 5.42. The lyrionmusicserver package had already been patched for anyone who wants to migrate."
Subtle. It seems odd to me for that message even to be put on the logitechmediaserver page - ie "It's fixed now, but you won't find a working version here."
Last edited by bananabrain (2025-09-28 22:59:43)
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Hello there. I submitted the patch to fix the issue upstream and was responsible for the posts on the lyrionmusicserver and logitechmediaserver AUR pages. I am not the maintainer of either AUR package, but have been able to propagate fixes to the lyrionmusicserver one by making pull requests to the maintainer's GitHub account. This isn't the case for logitechmediaserver, so you'd need to wait for the PKBUILD to be updated. Alternatively, someone could post a patch in the comments, which I have done in the past for other issues. My comment stating that the problem has been fixed upstream is simply that, i.e. slimserver-vendor 9.1 is now fixed upstream and there is an easy pathway for an update to the logitechmediaserver packages should someone want to update the PKGBUILD. In the mean time, it's easy enough to switch to lyrionmusicserver if desired. Apologies if the post was confusing, the intention wasn't to imply that the AUR package itself was fixed.
With regards to your original question: Yes, it was a bit surprising that this took so long to fix, especially given that the solutions were trivial and posted early in various issue threads. The main reason is the issue of time and the burden of work on open source maintainers, plus the fact that people tend to report and discuss problems on issue threads such as this rather than taking the effort to write up a clear description and posting it to the appropriate upstream source. I only picked it up since I had a bit of spare time and had managed to get it working locally. Adding fixes or patches is often non-trivial and work may need to be done in order to ensure that updates are backwards compatible and don't have any unintended consequences.
I do think the maintainer's comments were partly meant in jest. You do need to think of things from their perspective, i.e. they get reports like this from bleeding edge distro users for essentially every Perl release. In most cases maintaining LMS isn't their day job, so it can be tiring to repeat the same old things, especially when Arch isn't their priority audience. It was, in fact, the same maintainer who was very helpful and responsive when reviewing the upstream PRs when someone finally took the time to submit one.
In terms of long-term package stability: The LMS community do provide a Docker image, which is available here. This is very easy to use, but obviously isn't the most desirable solution for all users. The Docker solution could probably be wrapped as an AUR package if needed.
Ultimately, this is just one of the things that comes with using a fast moving distro. In general, I've always found that a quick Google gets me most of the way to the solution, and communities such as this are invaluable to that end. I'd personally rather have things break occasionally and get to learn a bit more, but I appreciate that this isn't for everyone.
Cheers.
Last edited by loh (2025-09-29 15:27:08)
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Thank you loh. Very much appreciated.
Apart from advice on the lyrion boards for anyone interested in LMS to abandon archlinux certainly not being made in jest, your third paragraph is unassailable. I'd never lean on anyone providing the world with high quality free software to "get a move on".
I get that those of us running bleeding edge systems should expect some inconvenience along the way. In my long user's experience with LMS, the delay on this occasion seemed excessive given the relatively simple nature of the problem. That's all - no complaints as such.
I remain slightly befuddled by the whole logitech-to-lyrion thing. Is the plan to drop development of the former? That reads like a naive question but I haven't actually seen it written anywhere, and if so it seems a long time coming.
Thanks again for the time given to your earlier reply, and sincere thanks for your effort with the software.
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No problem. As for Lyrion vs Logitech, this thread has a good explanation. For the most part, it's essentially just a name change, other than the complete reimplementation of plugins/services that were provided by mysqueezebox.com, which is now defunct. I've had no issues whatsoever with the transition and ironically only switched over to lyrionmusicserver since it made more sense to attempt to fix the Perl issues with the most recent version first, then backport as needed. If I recall correctly, even the logitechmediaserver package already contains the Lyrion rebranding in the web interface.
At some point it probably makes sense to simply remove the old packages, or alias them to the new ones. It seems an unnecessary maintenance burden, especially since the logitechmediaserver package is already newer than the version 8.5 transition point anyway, i.e., as far as I can tell, it's essentially just an older version of lyrionmusicserver at this point anyway. (From this it seems like 8.5 might have still been a Logitech branded release, although it does remove all mysqueezebox integration.)
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