Ubuntu – How to add authenticated podcast feed to rhythmbox

12.10gnomepodcastrhythmbox

I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 with Rhythmbox 2.97.

I have an RSS podcast feed that uses HTTP Auth.

Adding this URL to Rhythmbox podcast library results in a generic 'Unable to load the feed. Check your network connection' error. Adding a non-authenticated feeds works as expected.

How can I authenticate this feed in Rhythmbox? Alternatively, what would be a good podcast app (preferably GTK-based) that support authenticated feeds?

Best Answer

As far as I know there isn't currently any support for authenticated http podcast feeds in Rhythmbox or any of its third party plugins, as also noted on the mailing lists.

A program that is specially designed for managing podcasts is gpodder, which is available in the repositories. As I know from experience, what it says about its support for authenticated podcast feeds in the FAQ is accurate. You need to open the program and then

simply add your username and password into the URL when adding a channel. gPodder will automatically see the provided authentication data and use it to authenticate to the web server. The syntax is http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@example.org/files/feed.xml.

An example of the authentication process in gpodder is below:

enter image description here

The authentication works best in the 3.x series as sometimes it would fail in the 2.x series if the 'user name consists of an email', but as 3.2 is the default version in Quantal you should be fine.

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