Armangil's Podcatcher - Part 4

(See part 3 here).

With everything tested, my next step was to setup a configuration similar to my production server.

I installed the Podcatcher package in the /opt directory. For the application files, I created /var/opt/podcatcher. The OPML file was stored in /etc/opt/podcatcher. And the podcast files were directed to /export/podcasts.

Here is the command used to run the program:

ruby /opt/podcatcher/bin/podcatcher
/etc/opt/podcatcher/podcast_subs.opml
-d /var/opt/podcatcher
-D /export/podcasts
-s 0
-S back_catalog
-H 2007.08.15
-p
-v

Seems to be working OK. The next step is to set it up to run twice a day unattended.

Armangil's Podcatcher - Part 3

(See part 2 here)

OK, so I think I've figured out why files are being deleted somewhat randomly. The SIZE option determines how much disk space will be used for the content cache, and the default is set to 512MB. With all of the testing I've been doing, I filled up that space pretty quickly. I can set it to zero to indicate no limit, or pick another size.

Juice, my windows based podcatcher, has a handy option that handles the deletion of old content on a per feed basis, where the cutoff is stated in days, not MB. I use this for podcasts I that only listen to occasionally. The latest version is always available, but I don't have to worry about piling up old episodes. Since the SIZE option looks at the entire cache to decide what to delete, I probably won't use if for this purpose.

So I've dropped the --no-empty option, and I'll have to add a SIZE option. Also, I'll probably use 'new' for the strategy rather than 'chron'. The difference seems to be which is downloaded first - old or new, so it doesn't really matter too much if I have enough space allotted.

My next experiments will be to try directing the cache to another folder, and using my actual OPML file in place of the demo.

More later...

UPDATED: I take it all back! The back_catalog strategy works better than new. In fact, I'm not sure of the difference between new and one.

Armangil's Podcatcher - Part 2

(See part 1 here)

I've been experimenting the past few nights with some options for the podcatcher.

-S chron

The strategy option controls the order of and amount of downloads. I used 'chron' to grab any new content

-H 2007.08.01

Horizon is used to set a cutoff date for the earliest download. I wanted to limit the number of downloads (and the time it would take) when working with long running or prolific podcasts

-p

Creates a subfolder for each feed

--no-empty

I've been having the problem of old content being deleted when new content is downloaded, but this option didn't really seem to help.

-v

The verbose mode let me see what the program was doing as it happened

In this snippet of the output, we can see files being deleted.

Deleting: /home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/PodTech.net: Technology and Entertainment Video Network/Podtech_sameer_zook.mp3
Deleting: /home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/Rocketboom RSS 2.0 WINDOWS WMV/rb_07_aug_14.wmv
Deleting: /home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/Rocketboom RSS 2.0 WINDOWS WMV
Fetching: http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode65-introToEmbeddedSystems.mp3 (42257055 bytes)
#EXTINF:-1,[Software Engineering Radio] Episode 65: Introduction to Embedded Systems
/home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/Software Engineering Radio/seradio-episode65-introToEmbeddedSystems.mp3
Fetching: http://www.rocketboom.net/video/rb_07_aug_15.wmv (1000 bytes)
#EXTINF:-1,[Rocketboom RSS 2.0 WINDOWS WMV] rb_07_aug_15
/home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/Rocketboom RSS 2.0 WINDOWS WMV/rb_07_aug_15.wmv
Deleting: /home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/Photos from everyone tagged green/1120072640_cac0ed247e_o.jpg
Deleting: /home/dgentry/podcatcher/cache/dawn and drew tv/dawnanddrewtv-73620-08-05-2007.mp4
Fetching: ...

More later...

Armangil's Podcatcher

I've been looking for a way to have my server download podcasts, rather than my desktop machine. The main reason is that I'm running Juice on Windows, and I don't have Windows running that often. I have to reboot into XP to grab the latest; then I switch back to Linux. Sure, I could run the Linux version of Juice/iPodder, but I hope to get this function off the desktop completely.

I downloaded version 3.0.0 here, and extracted it to a folder in my home folder - just to play. I also had to install Ruby on the machine.

The extract command is: tar zxvf podcatcher-3.0.0.tar.gz

To install Ruby: sudo apt-get install ruby

To give it a try, I ran it using the demo OPML file:

ruby bin/podcatcher demo/subscriptions.opml


The screen displays #EXT3MU, and then nothing else for a long while. Be patient!

(I should point out that I'm running this test on my play LAMP server, which is a 300MHz powerhouse with 196MB of RAM. It should be better on the production file server.)

After some time, the latest file in each feed was downloaded to the cache folder. Not bad.

There are a lot of parameters/switches available to fine tune the behavior. I can have it grab more than just the latest, get all since a date, direct to other folders, and much more. Looks like I have some experimentation ahead.