Running MusicBrainz on Solaris
One of the really nice things about MusicBrainz
(everyone's favorite music metadatabase) is that you can download the
entire database and run a local copy. Of course for casual access,
it is easy enough to use the MusicBrainz web services, but for the
hardcore among us, having a local copy of the database is the cat's
meow.
Now MusicBrainz is a pretty hardcore Linux shop, so I was a bit worried that getting the MusicBrainz database running on Solaris would be a nightmare of sorting out twisted package dependencies and incompatibilites, especially since I've never configured Postgres (the MusicBrainz DB) on Solaris before. I was expecting a long frustrating morning with lots of calls to Steve for help. But I gave it a try and discovered that it was really quite easy. I just followed the instructions for configuring Postgres for Solaris here: How to Configure and Run PostgreSQL on Solaris 10, and then followed the instructions for installing the MusicBrainz database here: How to Import the MusicBrainz Database.
It all just worked.
I didn't have to install software or patches. There were no
dependency issues, no perl modules, no crying, no calls to Steve. I
just downloaded the MusicBrainz dumps, grabbed the SQL code from the MB
subversion repository and followed the install steps. Now I
have super-music-metadata-power.
Now, the next step is to implement a couple of (simple) scripts so you can download the updates straight from MB. So, with a few daily INSERTs, your local DB is always up-to-date! :-)
Cheers, Oscar
Posted by Oscar on July 13, 2007 at 12:16 PM EDT #