On-Speaker Spotify Boot Primer for Bose SoundTouch

Self-contained boot-time Spotify primer that runs directly on the speaker. No Spotify credentials on the device — it fetches a fresh token from a Bose-SoundTouch server at boot. No jq, no rootfs modification — just files on persistent storage.

How It Works

Bose SoundTouch speakers run embedded Linux with a persistent writable volume at /mnt/nv. The init script shelby_local (S97) has a built-in hook:

[ -x /mnt/nv/rc.local ] && /mnt/nv/rc.local

This runs before SoundTouch itself (S99), so we background a primer script that waits for the Spotify Connect ZeroConf endpoint (port 8200) to come up, fetches a fresh Spotify token from the service, and primes the speaker — all within ~30 seconds of boot.

File Layout

/mnt/nv/
  rc.local                                      boot hook (S97 checks this)
  .profile                                      PATH setup for interactive SSH
  bin/
    spotify-boot-primer                         main script
  BoseApp-Persistence/1/
    spotify-primer.conf                         service credentials (mode 600)
    Sources.xml, Presets.xml, ...               existing speaker data

Scripts live in /mnt/nv/bin/ (added to PATH via .profile), config lives alongside the speaker's own persistence files in /mnt/nv/BoseApp-Persistence/1/.

Speaker Environment

Tested on SoundTouch 20. Other SoundTouch models likely similar.

Item	Detail
OS	Linux 3.14.43+ ARM (hostname `spotty`)
Root FS	Read-only ubifs (can be remounted rw)
Persistent storage	`/mnt/nv` — writable ubifs, ~24M free
curl	7.50.3 with OpenSSL (HTTPS works)
bash/grep/sed/awk	Available via busybox
jq	Not available (not needed)
Init	SysV, runlevel 5
Production mode	Yes — cron is disabled

Prerequisites

SSH access to the speaker:

ssh -o HostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa -o PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa root@SPEAKER_IP

A running Bose-SoundTouch server with:
- A linked Spotify account (via the management API OAuth flow)
- The GET /mgmt/spotify/token endpoint (returns {accessToken, username})
- Management API credentials (HTTP Basic Auth)

Installation

SSH into the speaker and run:

# 1. Create bin directory
mkdir -p /mnt/nv/bin
# 2. Create the config file with your service connection info
cat > /mnt/nv/BoseApp-Persistence/1/spotify-primer.conf << 'EOF'
SOUNDTOUCH_URL=https://soundtouch.example.com
SOUNDTOUCH_USER=admin
SOUNDTOUCH_PASS=secret
EOF
chmod 600 /mnt/nv/BoseApp-Persistence/1/spotify-primer.conf
# 3. Copy spotify-boot-primer to the speaker
#    From your local machine:
#    cat scripts/spotify/spotify-boot-primer | ssh root@SPEAKER_IP "cat > /mnt/nv/bin/spotify-boot-primer"
chmod +x /mnt/nv/bin/spotify-boot-primer
# 4. Create the boot hook
cat > /mnt/nv/rc.local << 'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
/mnt/nv/bin/spotify-boot-primer &
EOF
chmod +x /mnt/nv/rc.local
# 5. Set up PATH for interactive SSH sessions (optional but convenient)
cat > /mnt/nv/.profile << 'EOF'
export PATH="/mnt/nv/bin:$PATH"
EOF

Testing

# Manual test (speaker must be running):
/mnt/nv/bin/spotify-boot-primer
# Check logs:
logread | grep spotify-primer
# Full test — reboot the speaker:
reboot
# Wait ~30s, then SSH back in and check:
logread | grep spotify-primer
curl -s "http://localhost:8200/zc?action=getInfo" | grep activeUser

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