Raspberry PI as an iTunes server with forked-daapd

OK, so I have my basic connectivity to the Mac OS with avahi, the HD containing the music is being automounted mode 0666/0777 with autofs udev, and I can see the Pi from the Mac (not from my Windows 8 box yet, for which I will wait for the release of Raspbmc, currently at RC3Raspbmc 1.0 has been released, I have configured Samba, works very well now).

forked-daapd is a free iTunes server, and diegocaro describes a forward port to Raspbian here, which he recommends instead of the foorked-daapd  normally packaged with Raspbian Wheezy due to  problems with the libevent-2.0 dependency. His port uses libevent-1.4.1. I followed his description, and lo and behold, it works, i.e. I can see my music on a iTunes client. Well, it almost worked. I did get drops.

I experimented with the iTunes setting in /etc/forked-daapd.conf


        # Should iTunes metadata override ours?
        itunes_overrides = true

I upped the log level in the conf file and looked at the log output with 

tail -f /var/log/forked-daapd.log

and saw that I started to process the 'iTunes Music Library.xml' file, whose entries refer to the old mp3 file locations back from when I still had the music HD directly on my Windows box, resulting in a slew of "Could not find..." messages. Now the iTunes client is still seeing the share, but hangs at Loading and then reverts back to the local library. So I turned the commented out itunes override again.

The drops are still happening, and more web research will be needed about that. Meanwhile, I wait for that Raspbmc release. Now with the Raspbmc March update, forked-daapd is working great! It picked up all my music, and NO MORE DROPS!! I love it! Banshee and Rythmbox on my Ubuntu Laptop pick up the service just fine, so does iTunes on Windows 8, iTunes on my wife's Mac. I even tried Rythmbox and Banshee simultaneously, no problem. Hyperfine Remote for iTunes on my pad on the hand shows the library content correctly but doesn't play it. Pairing worked as described in the source's README (the Device name is "Remote for iTunes") , but when I select a song, it simply doesn't play at all. Stay tuned for that part.