My Success With Launching Shairport-Sync in Docker on Ubuntu 24.04.1

[DiogenesAnalytics]

Having used Shairport-Sync deployed with Docker (i.e. the mikebrady/shairport-sync image) for many years (almost a decade now) I had only ever used it on Raspberry Pis (which of course worked flawlessly). Recently I needed to deploy a shairport-sync instance on an Ubuntu Desktop (24.04.1) installed on a 2011 iMac and it was a bit more challenging ...

As it turns out this was in large part due to the default output in ALSA on Ubuntu being Pipewire. While I was able to get Shairport-Sync to work on the bare-metal host after installing with sudo apt install shairport-sync, I could not get the Docker version to work.

But I stayed on it, and I eventually was able to discover what was the "system default" for the audio output device by running the following:

aplay -L

Notice that is a capital L ... which printed out:

null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pipewire
    PipeWire Sound Server
default
    Default ALSA Output (currently PipeWire Media Server)
hw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3
    HDA ATI HDMI, iMac
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3
    HDA ATI HDMI, iMac
    Hardware device with all software conversions
hdmi:CARD=HDMI,DEV=0
    HDA ATI HDMI, iMac
    HDMI Audio Output
dmix:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3
    HDA ATI HDMI, iMac
    Direct sample mixing device
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Digital
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Digital
    Hardware device with all software conversions
sysdefault:CARD=PCH                                                 <---------- BINGO!!!!
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    Front output / input
surround21:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Analog
    Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
    HDA Intel PCH, CS4206 Digital
    Direct sample mixing device

Eventually, after much research and attempts to mess around with pipewire, I found a combination of Docker options that configured the container correctly:

docker run -d \
    --privileged \
    --name shairport-sync \
    --network host \
    --restart unless-stopped \
    -v /dev/snd:/dev/snd \
    mikebrady/shairport-sync \
      -v -- -d sysdefault:CARD=PCH

This has worked so far ... no crashing, no "sound not playing" issues ... it actually works. I hope that this info will help as many people trying to setup the dockerized Shairport-Sync on Ubuntu (specifically 24+) as possible (because I know, as we all do, how frustrating and mind destroying solving some of these technical/configuration problems can be).

Best of luck to you all, and I hope this helps.

P.S.

Here is a pic of my Owntone server using all 3 dockerized Shairport-Sync servers:

Here are the logs (sanitized) from the server running successfully:
logs.txt

[mikebrady]

Thanks for that useful guide!

[DiogenesAnalytics]

Just trying to give back to the community! Thanks for building this awesome tool!