Run multiple SPS-AP2 instances in Docker #1374
Replies: 5 comments 14 replies
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I got pulseaudio working on my host as a system wide systemd service and the docker containers are configured to reach the host via unix:/var/run/pulse/native. I managed to spin up two instances, both pointed at the same PA sink. I have fairly good sync when testing with a set of headphones. Now I have to remember how to add sinks to PA. I will write this whole process up and share my docker-compose.yaml once I have it all nailed down. |
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So I have this working with two cards in a test server that is freshly loaded with Debian Bullseye. I have PulseAudio running as a system wide systemd service and for whatever reason on a reboot it doesn't properly add all my ALSA sinks. All I have to do is restart the pulseaudio service and they all show up. My work around is to create a bash script that checks to see if all the sinks are there and if not it restarts the service. I then have a docker compose for each shairport-sync instance. It's working really well, sync is perfect. I tested with the left headphone of one instance and the right headphone from the other instance. So the basic steps are:
And here is a sample docker-compose.yaml that will automatically create the macvlan network (I named it spsnet): services:
shairport-sync:
container_name: SPS-Livingroom
image: shairport-sync:unstable-development
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- ./shairport-sync.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf
- /var/run/pulse:/var/run/pulse
environment:
- PULSE_SERVER=unix:/var/run/pulse/native
- PULSE_COOKIE=/tmp/pulseaudio.cookie
networks:
spsnet:
ipv4_address: 192.168.1.100 # Static IP assign to the container. Make sure it's not already in use on the host network
networks:
spsnet:
name: spsnet
driver: macvlan
driver_opts:
parent: eno1 # Physical network interface on host that we want to bind to
ipam:
config:
- subnet: 192.168.1.0/24 # This needs to match the subnet of your host network
gateway: 192.168.1.254I will write up something more formal and create a GitHub repo with the README.md and the pulseaudio.service I am using. I really wish I could figure out why PulseAudio fails to pickup my ALSA sinks on a reboot without restarting the service. That is the one thing that convoluts the whole thing. It would also be nice if the container could pull an IP from DHCP but I was unable to find a way to do that, |
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Hmm this looks interesting, I think I tried this before but couldn't get it working but I'm glad you were able to! Unfortunately I've still not been able to get this working though, it might be because I'm using |
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Did you use the macvlan driver? I haven't tried wireless but don't see why it would make a difference. I'm running on a full sized Intel machine over ethernet. I have a spare RPi3B that I will reload and then see if I can get multiple docker instances to work on the wireless adapter. It's working really well for me. The only network related issue I've run into is the containers can not access the host. They can access anything on the host network, just not the host itself. It turns out this is normal for a macvlan network. One of my SPS instances is setup to call a script that does some CURL requests on setvol, start and stop but it was failing to reach the host IP. The workaround was to bind the containers to two networks. Most people don't need to access the host from the containers so it's not a big deal. Here is my current docker-compose.yaml. You will also notice I'm adding a host record for server1 so that it overrides the DNS lookup. services:
SPS-Bathroom:
container_name: SPS-Bathroom
image: shairport-sync:unstable-development
restart: unless-stopped
extra_hosts:
- "server1:172.18.0.1"
volumes:
- ./shairport-sync-bathroom.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf
- /var/run/pulse:/var/run/pulse
- ./scripts:/opt/shairport-sync
environment:
- PULSE_SERVER=unix:/var/run/pulse/native
- PULSE_COOKIE=/tmp/pulseaudio.cookie
networks:
spsnet_bridge:
spsnet:
ipv4_address: 10.18.11.1
SPS-Livingroom:
container_name: SPS-Livingroom
image: shairport-sync:unstable-development
restart: unless-stopped
extra_hosts:
- "server1:172.18.0.1"
volumes:
- ./shairport-sync-livingroom.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf
- /var/run/pulse:/var/run/pulse
- ./scripts:/opt/shairport-sync
environment:
- PULSE_SERVER=unix:/var/run/pulse/native
- PULSE_COOKIE=/tmp/pulseaudio.cookie
networks:
spsnet_bridge:
spsnet:
ipv4_address: 10.18.11.2
SPS-Porch:
container_name: SPS-Porch
image: shairport-sync:unstable-development
restart: unless-stopped
extra_hosts:
- "server1:172.18.0.1"
volumes:
- ./shairport-sync-porch.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf
- /var/run/pulse:/var/run/pulse
- ./scripts:/opt/shairport-sync
environment:
- PULSE_SERVER=unix:/var/run/pulse/native
- PULSE_COOKIE=/tmp/pulseaudio.cookie
networks:
spsnet_bridge:
spsnet:
ipv4_address: 10.18.11.3
SPS-Garage:
container_name: SPS-Garage
image: shairport-sync:unstable-development
restart: unless-stopped
extra_hosts:
- "server1:172.18.0.1"
volumes:
- ./shairport-sync-garage.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf
- /var/run/pulse:/var/run/pulse
- ./scripts:/opt/shairport-sync
environment:
- PULSE_SERVER=unix:/var/run/pulse/native
- PULSE_COOKIE=/tmp/pulseaudio.cookie
networks:
spsnet_bridge:
spsnet:
ipv4_address: 10.18.11.4
networks:
spsnet:
name: spsnet
driver: macvlan
driver_opts:
parent: br0
ipam:
config:
- subnet: 10.18.0.0/16
gateway: 10.18.3.1
spsnet_bridge:
name: spsnet_bridge
driver: bridge |
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Yeah I did use the |
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I've used the details on this post to get host access to the macvlan, but it's not really necessary. If you consider it helpful for some coordination of the services in the container, it would allow it– blog.oddbit.com/post/2018-03-12-using-docker-macvlan-networks/ |
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I finally got around to making more legit instructions and packaged it all up here: |
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Yeah, that worked well! Card 4 and 5 are plugged in USB next to each other. Containers share the ethernet connection on their own static IP. |
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I can't remember my reasoning for sticking with PA. I do have a multi channel card that I've put back to use so today I'd need to stick to PA. |
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I used this thread as a basis for getting multiple instances running on the same host in docker, and though I would share what I learned about setting this up and comparing PA and ALSA. At first I had problems with ALSA. I would get an error that the device was in already in use when I played from 2 instances at the same time. I ended up running PA in a separate container (connecting though TCP) to solve that issue. That worked fine. After thinking about it for a bit I realized that it was the lack of inter process communication (IPC) that was causing ALSA not to work between docker containers. Simply adding I followed this guide to make my 7.1 audio card into 4 stereo outputs in ALSA: When doing doing this, the asound.conf file does not need to be in the OS hosting the docker containers, only in the containers themselves. One thing that I noticed was that there was a significant sound delay when watching videos with PA. I'm sure that could be fixed, but I decided to get rid of PA, since I did not need it. PA also used a little bit more CPU than I liked. Bottom line is that both approaches works, but ALSA was right for me. |
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I wondering if it's possible to run multiple shareport-sync instances without macvlan or ipvlan. That would make this setup very straight forward. From what I can tell, the core problem is that NQPTP can not share ports. I'm not familiar with NQPTP, but would it be possible for multiple instances of shareport-sync to share one instance of NQPTP? I'm assuming it's possible to announce several shareport-sync instances over mDNS running on different ports. |
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I knew the ALSA issues were IPC related and no amount of searching the internet could I find a solution. Finally someone figured it out! @haavar, you are the man! Now, do I reconfigure my environment or stick with PA.... I think I'll stick with PA because I've begun using the duck plugin of PA to allow me to broadcast announcements to the whole house and it will duck the volume of anything else that is already playing so you can actually hear the announcements. @haavar, thanks for sharing your findings. As for sharing one instance of NQPTP, I think at one point that was possible but I think Mike gutted that ability at some point. I'm sure Mike will chime in. |
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That's funny, I was literally working on announcement with ALSA when you wrote your reply. |
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I have a setup running 9 instances of shairport-sync outputting across two USB sound cards on an armbian host. The shairport-sync package in armbian is quite old so I started migrating the setup over to If I So it seems like these containers are getting stuck on starting dbus. Any clues as to why? |
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I regularly start 3 containers at the same time, and I have not ran into this. I have not tried with more than 3. Short term I want to expand to running 5, longer term up to 9. Can you share your compose file? |
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compose and other config files are here: https://gist.github.com/crowding/41b9852776d61c8de984e7244359337b |
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I just tested with 5 zones, and I not seeing the same issue, but my setup is a bit different than yours. I use alsa, and not PA. Another difference is that I run debian amd64. I was running with 3 zones, but I added 2 more today. I use an USB 7.1 audio card that I've split up into 4 stereo channels, and I have one container outputting to the HDMI port. |
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I have 7 zones running PA and I've not had any issues with them hanging on start. It's been rock solid for me. I am using a combination of USB 2ch cards along with onboard sound. One of the USB cards is split into to mono outputs. I would switch to ALSA now that @haavar figured out how to resolve the IPC issue but I'm taking advantage of the module-role-ducking PA plugin which causes music playback volume in all zones to drop when ever I want to make a house wide announcement. I am also running Debian. |
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So I just discovered a way to run multiple instances of SPS-AP2 in Docker containers that each have their own IP on the host network.
First you need to create a new Docker network like this:
In the above command, you eno1 is the physical network interface on your host machine. The subnet and gateway need to match your host networks subnet and gateway. I am naming this network spsnet.
Now when you run the first instance of shairport-sync, do it like this:
docker run -d --name FirstInstance --restart unless-stopped --net spsnet \ --ip 192.168.18.81 \ -v /opt/shairport-sync/FirstInstance.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf \ -v /etc/asound.conf:/etc/asound.conf --device /dev/snd mikebrady/shairport-sync:unstable-developmentAnd the second instance like this:
docker run -d --name SecondInstance --restart unless-stopped --net spsnet \ --ip 192.168.18.82 \ -v /opt/shairport-sync/SecondInstance.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf \ -v /etc/asound.conf:/etc/asound.conf --device /dev/snd mikebrady/shairport-sync:unstable-developmentYou can see I am also mapping in a custom shairport-sync.conf into each container. I have also specified a static IP for each container. You would need to make sure these statics aren't already in use on your network.
The only hang up I am having is with my elaborate alsa config. My asound.conf busts a single 7.1 card into multiple cards. It works fine on the host but for some reason the containers complain that the card is in use. I can connect and play to the FirstInstance and sound comes out of the correct output. I can then disconnect from the FirstInstance and then connect and play to the SeccondInstance and the audio comes out of the other output. I just can't play to both instances at the same time because SPS complained that the output is busy. ALSA dmix just doesn't seem to work correctly in Docker containers.
It looks like the only way for this to really work would be having fully discrete sound cards for each instance and let each instance have exclusive access to each card. I'm amazed there isn't more talk about ALSA and dmix in Docker. Seems the whole world uses Pulse for everything these days.
mikebrady/shairport-sync:unstable-development doesn't have Pulse support so I'll have to make my own image but I suspect I can get it to work with Pulse. I feel like I am close to having a super easy to deploy way of running multiple SPS-AP2 instances without a stack of Raspberry Pi's.
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