Using Multiple Directories Under Parent

From Music Player Daemon Community Wiki

Simply: Use symlink(s)

Explanation: Music Player Daemon only supports one directory for the music_directory option in mpd.conf. There is a good reason for that and it is because MPD fully supports symlinks. Symlinks are easy to use. The following example will give you an idea of how to setup multiple directories under your music_directory.

• Start off by going to your music_directory, for instance if your music_directory is "/home/mpd/root" you type

user@computer ~ # cd /home/mpd/root

at a shell prompt.

• Next, if I wanted to link to /mnt/music/albums it would go like this:

user@computer /home/mpd/root # ln -s /mnt/music/albums/ /home/mpd/root/albums

Now, do note that there is no trailing '/' on /home/mpd/root/albums. That is because you are making a file to point to /mnt/music/albums/, a shortcut in the windows world.

A common problem: Remember that a symlink only points to the directory, the symlink itself has all permissions to do anything, but the directory it points to may not, if you have issues using symlinks it is probably a permissions problem with the target directory, be sure to check this.

For Ubuntu users, if your directories and files are on other devices, like /dev/hda1, you must add mpd user to "plugdev" group.

For more information see: Symbolic_link