Recommended Media Server?

Hi,

I'm ready to get my media server going (read: I've finally unfubar'd all my directories) and it seems there are a number of software choices.

Do any of you really like what you're using? Any of you really hate a particular media server?

Thanks,

FZR

Depends on your client.

I currently have Firefly Media server http://www.fireflymediaserver.org/ aka mt-daapd running for iTunes client, and mediatomb http://mediatomb.cc/ running for UPnP client. Mediatomb is little more resource intensive, but both can be installed via apt-get and both work well (for music, haven't tried movies or photos). Indexing can take a while, depending on the size of your media collection.

I tried squeezeboxserver, but my first experience was a bust. The version I tried 7.5.2, I think, was a resource hog and very slow. I have heard better things about the current testing version, and intend to try that at some point.

Let us know what you end up trying / using.

Thanks,

I'm using minidlna as a mediaserver for my Samsung TV. Had to compile it from source on my dockstar.
Minidlna works great against my TV so thats a keeper for me :)

Peter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm using minidlna as a mediaserver for my Samsung TV.
> Had to compile it from source on my dockstar.

BTW, minidlna has been packaged for Debian but not yet accepted into the archive. Until then, you can
find the package here.

minidlna doesn't support rmvb

Also using miniDlna, compiled on the Dockstar. It uses very little resources and works really fine with my Galaxy S phone and Win7 PC. It doesn't refresh the libraries automatically like it should but restarting it manually does the trick so I'm happy with it.

I've been attempting to turn my Dockstar into a PVR and I finally have most of Freevo's backend working on it. Next up is a Upnp/dlna server and I tried getting minidlna off of sourceforge, but the tar.gz I grabbed wasn't source code but binary for X86 (at least that's my guess).

Where did you find the source at to compile for the Dockstar? Most seem to be using Mythtv which has a Upnp server, but I couldn't get that to compile and not segfault. The precompiled package for armel doesn't support the HDPVR which I need, so I switched to Freevo but that forces me to find a few extra programs to get the entire backend to do what I need.

Well, I installed both Firefly and Mediatomb.

Firefly seems to have been killed off by developer apathy and iTunes 10, so that was a non-starter.

MediaTomb installed fine and once I thought to chmod my music files, everything went just fine. iTunes won't see it, though.

What I'd really like is something like the Serve To Me/Stream To Me apps that are available for the iPad. Those are pretty slick.

More as I find it.

I was finally able to compile minidlna for my Dockstar, since sourceforge's CVS is now working again. It does seem to serve up files just fine to my PS3, but I did run into one unexpected oddity. DO NOT pick a directory that you care about to store it's database in. When it rebuilds the database, it does so by deleting the directory first.

One last part of my project to finish and that's getting Liirc running properly. Thanks for the information on minidlna, it does the job I needed with the smallest CPU/Memory impact that I've seen so far.

ecc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I'm using minidlna as a mediaserver for my
> Samsung TV.
> > Had to compile it from source on my dockstar.
>
> BTW, minidlna has been packaged for Debian but not
> yet accepted into the archive. Until then, you can
>
> find the package here.
Link broken. Do you have a new link?

The following link from Phanton Dad's post works just fine for me.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11823414/minidlna/minidlna_1.0.18debian-dockstar_armel.deb

xplosive Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The following link from Phanton Dad's post works
> just fine for me.
>
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11823414/minidlna/minidlna
> _1.0.18debian-dockstar_armel.deb


Yes it available. I will try it later. Thanks.

I found it. Thanks.
I don't know why my previous message was marked as spam. Oh, well.

Thanks for the link, however during install it complained about many missing dependencies. All of them was like libavformat52 or some other libavcodecs...

I tried to manually install all these, however, even here they seemed to be dependent upon each other.
So how do I get minidlna with all the required libav...codecs installed?

Thanks
Steen

root@dockstar:~# wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12993249/minidlna_1.0.18debian-dockstar_armel.deb # loading minidlna (Ive upped it also to my DropBox acc)

root@dockstar:~# dpkg -i minidlna_1.0.18debian-dockstar_armel.deb # install minidlna. Dependencies not resolved yet!

root@dockstar:~# apt-get -f install # RESOLVING ALL DEPENDENCIES!!!!


Greetings from Germany

BigRon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> root@dockstar:~# wget
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12993249/minidlna_1.0.18de
> bian-dockstar_armel.deb #
> loading minidlna (Ive upped it also to my DropBox
> acc)
>
> root@dockstar:~# dpkg -i
> minidlna_1.0.18debian-dockstar_armel.deb
> # install minidlna. Dependencies not
> resolved yet!
>
> root@dockstar:~# apt-get -f install
> # RESOLVING ALL
> DEPENDENCIES!!!!
>
>
> Greetings from Germany

The installation works fine and it seems that the server is running, but I can't connect! Is'nt is port 8200 the server is running at?

Greetings,
Thomas

Yes, it defaults to port 8200. Check minidlna.log to be sure (usually found in /var/cache/minidlna).

Regards,
Heinz

hkramski Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, it defaults to port 8200. Check minidlna.log
> to be sure (usually found in
> /var/cache/minidlna).
>
> Regards,
> Heinz


Sorry, no such file! If I run top I can see minidlan is running.

645 root      20   0 27928  560  396 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.37 minidlna

netstat don't show the service.

This is what I get:

root@fredl:/etc# netstat -nlp | grep minidlna
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8200            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      22945/minidlna
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:1900            0.0.0.0:*                           22945/minidlna
udp        0      0 192.168.0.2:47875       0.0.0.0:*                           22945/minidlna

root@fredl:/usr/local/src# minidlna -V
Version 1.0.18

There doesn't seem to be an option for switching logging on or off.

Have you set something like db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna explicitly in minidlna.conf? Maybe this enables logging as a side effect.

You can also stop the service and start it manually from the command line with something like

minidlna -d -f /etc/minidlna.conf

This will get you a lot of logging output to your standard console.

HTH
Heinz



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2011 04:40PM by hkramski.

Hi,
I think I've made a mistake! Everything seems to work. I thought I could connect via web-browser, but that seems to be wrong. Minidlna seems not to include a web-server, right?! I've connected via windows media-player and it seems to work fine now.

Greetings
Thomas

Hi,
I want to install minidlna on the dockstar, i used this on two ubuntu pc's absolutely hassle free.
I have installed squeeze on the dockstar.

There are several posibilities to install minidlna and I used:
A)
This one right out of this thread to install 1.0.18
The installation worked ok.
I set the media_dir=/media (anything I hook to the dockstar is mounted there via fstab) in minidlna.conf
My SONY BRAVIA TV can see the server but nothing appears in the folders where any media file (jpg, mp3, mpg) should show up which is located under /media.

B)
I tried to compile Sourcecode
This does not work, "make" complains about missing libraries and I do not know where to get or how to get around that

C)
I tried to install minidlna_1.0.21+dfsg-1_armel.deb from the sourceforge site.
Here I get some "missing dependency" errors
Paket libavformat52 is not installed.
Paket libavformat-extra-52 is not installed.
Paket libavutil50 is not installed.
Paket libavutil-extra-50 is not installed.

I added (hopefully correctly) the debian-multimedia site to sources.list, but anyway when i do
apt-get -f install
instead if installing the correct libraries, it deinstalls minidlna

I installed ffmpeg to get the libraries installed, but that does not help, again
"apt-get -f install" deinstalls ffmpeg rather than install the missing libs.

I assume that the entry in sources.list is not complete or wrong (I need to add this later, don't have it at the ready right now) so apt-get can not find the packages.

Questions:
A) Any idea why minidlna misbehaves, it works ok on other machines and distros
B) Any ideas why "make" can't see the libs? (I'll add the output later today)
C) What source has to be stated in sources.list with respect to multimedia packages?

THX

Martin
------
<QUOTE>"The problem with 'quick and dirty' is, that 'dirty' remains, long after 'quick' has been forgotten!"</QUOTE>
<AUTHOR> Steve McConnel, "Technical Design Debts"</AUTHOR>

Regarding B... You're missing the dependencies. The source should include some README or INSTALL or something file that details what the dependancies are. You'll need to find the coorespoding "-dev" packages from apt and install them. It's probably a good idea to install any multimedia packages from debian-multimedia anyway.

Regarding C... Did you install the debian-multimedia keyring? You need to do an "apt-get update" to get the package lists and then an "apt-get upgrade" to upgrade any existing packages that came from the standard debian repo.

@kraqh3d, thank you so far

Re C)
I installed the -dev packages and was able to "make" and install the 1.0.21 version of minidlna

Re B)
I have not done it yet, give it a try tomorrow

The new minidlna server is up and running and my TV sees it. (different logo)
But TV still does not see an media files .
A folder "video6" which I made in /media is listed, but no content (mp3, mpg, jpg) from /media or /media/video6
with minidlna.conf : media_dir=/media.
Still anything I miss?

THX

Martin

If you need an installable deb-file, here you go:
http://dev.shyd.de/2011/08/minidlna-dockstar-dlna-server/

If you want to update your folders, shut down minidlna and run it with

minidlna -R -f /etc/minidlna.conf

to rebuild the database. Then start it as normal.
Sadly I didn't find a solution to get minidlna notified by inotify about new files.
Hope this helps.

--
shyd

Goflex Net 3.9.5 | Dockstar 3.9.5 | http://dev.shyd.de

Have you considered serviio?

I have tried mediatomb and minidlna, but serviio works 10x better with my Samsung TV. I can pause, FF and RW which I was not able to do with previous DLNA servers.
I am currently running it on window PC, got it running on Dockstar and currently trying to install web interface for remote access.

Roman

Hi Roman,

I can do exactly THAT (Pause, FF, RW) with minidlna on my Sony Bravia.
If I leave a movie and get back there it steps in where I left it (as long as I did not start another one in between)

Just that inotify does not work and another issue when using the HD bay of the dockstar are trade-offs.

But since I want to set up the system again on a different stick I'll sure give it a try


THX and RGDS

Martin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2011 03:05AM by MartinH.

RomanG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I am currently running it on window PC, got it
> running on Dockstar and currently trying to
> install web interface for remote access.

Does that mean you managed to compile Serviio on your Dockstar or did you use an ARM binary? Where did you get the source/the binary?

Regards,
Heinz

Running it on Dockstar for several days now, works with movies, MP3s and pictures.
Downloaded Linux package from the serviio web site, no compilation on Dockstar:
http://download.serviio.org/releases/serviio-0.5.2-linux.tar.gz

java package downloaded from ORACLE/SUN web site:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/downloads/javase/index.html?origref=http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/overview/getstarted/index.html?origref=http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javame/embedded/index.html

I am using serviio web interface from this web site:
http://labs.softjourn.com/projects/serviioweb

happy so far

Roman

this is the version of java that I have installed in order to run serviio:

root@NEPTUNE:~# java -version

java version "1.6.0_25"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition for Embedded (build 1.6.0_25-b06, headless)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode)

Roman

Thanks, Roman, for the details. I managed to get it running, but it's slow like hell. Maybe I have more other services running and am short on free memory.

Just for the records: Java SE for Embedded 7 (ejre-7-fcs-b147-linux-arm-sflt-headless-27_jun_2011.tar.gz) didn't work for me at all, looks like it has to be Java SE for Embedded 6 (ejre-1_6_0_27-fcs-b07-linux-arm-sflt-eabi-headless-18_jul_2011.tar.gz).

Looks like I will keep using MiniDLNA, which works well with my Samsung B series TV.

Regards,
Heinz