Ok, here’s another method you can try. I wasn’t aware that it works out of the box, but it does, at least for my setup.
First, you need to install a web server on your server box if you haven’t done so already. I’m using Apache, but IIS might work as well. All instructions below are for Apache though.
Second, mount your storage folder, e.g. C:\music, into the web server directory structure using an alias:
Alias /music “C:/music”
This allows you to access your C:\music folder as http://yourserver.com/music
If you have more than one storage, repeat the step above for all storages using a different alias each time. For example, “C:\Jingles” becomes /jingles or so.
Now install mAirList on your client PC and set up the mAirListDB connection to the PostgreSQL server on your server box as per the instructions in the manual. Test the connection and make sure that you can start the mAirListDB management app, see the list of folders and files, edit the files and so on - all tasks except playback of files should be working at this point.
Inside the mAirListDB app, go to Administration -> Configuration -> Storages. You should see the list of storages along with their local folder on your server box. Double-click each storage, and in the configuration dialog, enter the appropriate URL for each storage as the Local Folder. For example, for the C:\music storage, enter “http://yourserver.com/music”.
At this point, you should be able to listen to all of your files. mAirList will transfer them from the Apache server in the background when you start the playback. This may involve a little delay, especially for large files, but it should still work.
When you double-click a file and look at the filename in the Properties dialog, you will see a somewhat weird string with mixed forward and backward slashes, e.g. “http://yourserver.com/music\some folder\artist title.mp3”. At least Apache is able to handle these mixed delimiteres correctly. I’m not sure if IIS does.
You should consider protecting the web server directory with a username and password, as explained in the Apache documentation (HTTP basic authentication). If you do so, you must include the username and password in the URL that you enter in the mAirListDB configuration, e.g. http://username:secret@yourserver.com/music.