By default xmms2d listens on a unix-socket at /tmp/xmms-ipc-[username] for IPC. This path is also used by default by clients such as Abraca and LXMusic.

Arch, now, supports starting xmms2d as a system wide daemon as a user configured in /etc/conf.d/xmms2d.conf. If this is configured to be the user who will run the client all is well and no further configuration is needed. If this, however, is not the case xmms2d should typically be configured to listen to some other socket (or some TCP port) and users should set the XMMS_PATH environment variable (or configure their clients in some other way). I think it would be nice to include some explanation of this in the comments of /etc/conf.d/xmms2d.conf. Especially since some clients will try to launch xmms2d as the current user if they cannot connect to an already running xmms2d, which might cause confusion because of different configuration and media library.

I would suggest something along these lines:
"If you set XMMS2_USER to a different user than the one who will be controlling xmms2d using xmms2 clients, make sure that the clients are aware of the path to xmms2d's IPC socket, or they might not be able to connect. On failure to connect some clients will try to run xmms2d themselves. These xmms2d instances will of course run as the user running the client, and not as the one configured below.

If an IPC path is specified on the command line to xmms2d (using XMMS2_PARAMETERS="-i tcp://127.0.0.1:9667"; for instance) that will be used. If not, xmms2d will use the path from its configuration file which is typically in ~/.config/xmms2/xmms2.conf. If this fails, a unix socket at /tmp/xmms-ipc-[username] will be used, where username is of the user starting xmms2d.

Clients typically try to get the ipc path from the XMMS_PATH environment variable, (which might be set by adding say 'export XMMS_PATH="tcp://127.0.0.1:9667"' to ~/.profile). If this fails they can check their configuration file (if they have one) and finally use unix:///tmp/xmms-ipc-[username], where username is of the user starting the client. Upon failing to connect some will try to start xmms2d themselves."

I just spotted that the manpages of xmms2d and xmms2-launcher are not very up to date. I'll try to get that fixed up stream.


package version: xmms2 0.7DrNo-5