Tim (one of my co-workers) and I have been messing around with mt-daapd for the last couple days, and I gotta say, the software *rocks*!
For those of you not familiar with DAAP, it’s the protocol that Apple uses for iTunes’s music operations over the network. mt-daapd is an open-source product that runs on Linux, and lets you set up an iTunes server. The current stable version is pretty nifty, but if you’re willing to go bleeding edge, you get lots of sweet features, like the ability to set up smart playlists via the web interface, and the ability to transcode pretty much any audio format on the fly, so iTunes can play ogg vorbis files over the network. If you’d like to try out mt-daapd’s current CVS version, I’ve got Debian packages built for it – give me a holler.
It’s also fairly trivial to set up a SSH tunnel to a remote iTunes server, and share that iTunes share on your local network.. assuming that you have a Linux box with mDNSResponder set up, at least. It’s pretty simple – just set up your SSH connection:
ssh username@remote-linux-box -N -f -L *:3690:ip-of-itunes-or-mt-daapd-server:3689
Then, in your /etc/mdns/mDNSResponder.conf file:
“Nate’s Music at Home” _daap._tcp. local. 3690
With this, I can easily stream music from my mt-daapd server at home to any box running iTunes on my subnet at work.
Like I said, teh cool!