MusicBrainz Server/Setup

Products > MusicBrainz Server > Server Setup

Next Generation MusicBrainz Server (2011 onward)

This page gives instructions for setting up the old Mason based MusicBrainz server in use from 2000 until 2011. For information on setting up a new Next Generation Schema MusicBrainz server, please see NGS Server Setup.

Old MusicBrainz Server (2000-2010)

The MusicBrainz Server is not available as an executable application. Setting up the server will require you to checkout the mb_server code from Subversion and manually follow the INSTALL file's directions.

You can browse the mb_server Subversion repository directly using the source browser.

Setup instructions

1. If you are a MusicBrainz developer follow INSTALL from our Git repository (potentially unstable).
2. For everyone else, follow INSTALL from our 20090524 release branch (latest stable release).
3. If you just want a running database (i.e. no website frontend) see the database setup guide instead.
4. Additionally, if you want to setup your own search server instead of having to query search.musicbrainz.org, use the search_server README.

An alternate option is to install a virtual MusicBrainz server. The virtual image comes fully configured with a Linux environment and the latest stable release of the mb_server source code.

The requirements may look daunting, but please don't let this discourage you; the INSTALL/README files are thorough and contain a lot of information, and we are willing to provide assistance. If you have questions about installing, join us in the #musicbrainz IRC channel or post a question on the developers mailing list and we will attempt to help you out.

We recommend that you dive in and give it a try - who knows how far you'll get and what you might learn along the way!

Requirements

In order to set up a running MusicBrainz server with the full database you will need:

• A linux box, preferably Ubuntu, that is a PIII-700 or better with 256MB RAM.
• 8GB of free disk space, (if you are a developer and only want the server code and database structure 2GB is more than enough).
• Subversion knowledge which will enable you to check out the source code.

As a developer the following knowledge/skills are beneficial:

• Apache, Perl, mod_perl, PostgreSQL and a number of perl modules.
• How to compile and install packages from source on a Linux box.
• How to patch existing packages, although we can help you out if you have questions about that.

Note: The server has never been ported to Windows, and we suspect that it would be a fair amount of work to make that happen.

License

The mb_server is licensed under the GPL (Gnu Public License).