MusicBrainz Server/Setup
Products > Server > Server development > Server setup
Introduction
In order to set up a running MusicBrainz server on your machine you will need the following:
- A linux box, preferably Ubuntu, that is a PIII-700 or better, with 256MB RAM and 2Gb of free disk space.
- A knowledge of Apache, Perl, mod_perl, PostgreSQL and a number of perl modules.
- Subversion knowledge which will enable you to check out the source code.
- A knowledge of how to compile and install packages from source on a Linux box.
- A knowledge of how to patch existing packages is helpful, although we can help you out if you have questions about that.
Some additional notes to keep in mind:
- You do not actually need to know SQL/Perl to setup the server, but if you plan on adding features to MusicBrainz it will help to have experience in those areas.
- The server has never been ported to Windows, and we suspect that it would be a fair amount of work to make that happen.
An alternative option to the above is to install a virtual MusicBrainz server that comes fully configured with a Linux environment and the latest release of the mb_server
source code.
If you are considering helping out with server development, thank you! Otherwise, happy hacking!
Installation instructions
- If you are a MusicBrainz developer working on the next server release use /trunk/INSTALL.
- For everyone else use the latest stable release, /branches/RELEASE_20090524-BRANCH/INSTALL.
- If you just want a running database (no website frontend) see the database setup guide instead.
- Additionally, if you want to setup your own search server instead of having to query
search.musicbrainz.org
, there is a README for that.
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!