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DLNA Server

1.   Introduction
2.   MiniDLNA
2.1   Install MiniDLNA
2.2   Configuring MiniDLNA
2.3   Starting MiniDLNA

Introduction

I've added a PS3 to my home cinema system, mostly for its media playing potential. I wanted to setup a DLNA compliant media server, using Linux, so I can use the PS3 as a wireless media player/jukebox.

MiniDLNA

After using Mediatomb, pretty successfully, I decided to give MiniDLNA a whirl since it is a fully fledged DLNA server whereas Mediatomb is UPnP.

At the time of writing MiniDLNA is doesn't currently support music play lists or Last.fm scrobbling, which is why I've kept Mediatomb running my audio streaming. The are must have feature for me. MiniDLNA doesn't support dynamic video thumbnail creation, which would be nice to have but is not essential.

MiniDLNA doesn't currently have any transcoding support either, but I'm not interested in that since I import video content into my library in a format natively supported by the PS3, either MPEG-2 TS or MPEG-4.

Install MiniDLNA

NOTE! These instruction are specific to Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 Server and MiniDLNA 0.16.x

Do the following as root. 

 aptitude -y install libavutil-extra-49 libavcodec-extra-52 libavformat-extra-52
 aptitude -y install libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libflac-dev libvorbis-dev libid3tag0-dev libexif-dev libjpeg62-dev libsqlite3-dev
 cd /tmp
 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@minidlna.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/minidlna co -P minidlna
 cd minidlna
 make
 make install
 cp linux/minidlna.init.d.script /etc/init.d/minidlna
 chmod 755 /etc/init.d/minidlna
 update-rc.d minidlna defaults

Configuring MiniDLNA

Configuring MiniDLNA is much simpler than Mediatomb, all the configuration can be found in '/etc/minidlna.conf' and are clearly explained.

NOTE! You'll probably want to 'db_dir' option on Ubuntu otherwise the SQLite database and MiniDLNA log files will be put in '/tmp'. Meaning you'll lose you database upon reboot!

Starting MiniDLNA

Start MiniDLNA as follow... 

 sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna start

Turn on your PS3 or other DLNA client to see you media :-)

References

$Id: DLNAServer,v 1.34 2009/12/18 14:56:42 martin Exp $

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