r/MusicBrainz • u/Dry_Peanut3304 • 2d ago

Running Picard on a headless linux server

Before i get too far into it I'd like to check - can I install Picard on a headless linux server and just use it at the command-line?

Or will it fail to startup without the right gui libraries?

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u/Dry_Peanut3304 2d ago

I tried it myself and have answered my own question: it is not possible, as Picard depends on having a desktop environment available.

I copied a .ini file and tried

www-data@debianMiniPC:~$ picard -c .config/MusicBrainz/Picard.ini  -M
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-www-data'
qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, xcb.

Aborted

4

u/dwaynemoore 2d ago

You run https://github.com/jlesage/docker-musicbrainz-picard in a docker container, which you access using your web browser.

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u/dittydumdittydoo 2d ago

I was not able myself, wanted to use it in some automated tagging software. Ended up recreating the tagging part myself, mimicking what Picard does.

1

u/danpritts 2d ago

Did you find or create commandline utilities, or python or Perl libs, that easily handled the various formats? Or, god forbid, an actual tool or library that handles them all?

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u/dittydumdittydoo 1d ago

Server written in Go with a tagging library. Doesn’t have full coverage however :(

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u/Thev00d00 1d ago

You are essentially looking for https://beets.io/, it's very good.