Re: Logging & Port handling

> can you explain what the logging => 0, setting does?

That's something plugin specific. Without looking at what exactly it 
does I'd say it has nothing to do with the LMS logging infrastructure.

> and what are the benefits of the second statement starting - my $log =
> Slim::Utils::Log->addLogCategory({

That's the logging which can be controlled from 
Settings/Advanded/Logging. It's part of LMS' logging and shows up in its 
server.log file.

> Does this give the capability of viewing the log from within the
> settings page? and will it handle housekeeping the log size?

Yes.

> I am thinking of switching the helper binary to a 3rd party binary as
> this ticks all the boxes feature-wise, whilst also being a smaller and
> faster binary. I have been speaking to the developer of this and he
> tells me that I can make the binary behave dynamically by allocating a
> port and communicating that way. To do this properly means I would need
> to identify an unused port for each instance that is running, and assign
> this when a player starts. Is there anything in the slimserver codebase
> that would assist in doing this, either port allocation or storage?

I don't think there's anything helping you with this. You could try to 
open a socket on each potential port to check for its availability.