Running minidlna aka. ReadyMedia on Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit

As ushare kept crashing at startup on my Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit machine, I switched to minidlna/ReadyMedia as the DNLA daemon of choice for my laptop to quickly share a few directiries via UPnP.

Installation is quite easy:

sudo apt-get install minidlna

The configuration is not much harder. Edit the file /etc/minidlna.conf with the editor of your choice and take notice of the following lines:

media_dir=A,/home/user/Music    
media_dir=P,/home/user/Pictures
media_dir=V,/home/user/Videos
friendly_name=Laptop            # Optional
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna      # Needs to be un-commented
log_dir=/var/log                # Needs to be un-commented
inotify=yes                     # 'no' for less resources, restart required for new media

In my case, minidlna did not start. Checking /var/log/minidlna.log revealed, that the daemon had no access to its sqlite database:

[2013/08/15 18:40:50] minidlna.c:321: fatal: ERROR: Failed to open sqlite database!  Exiting...

As the minidlna daemon gets started as user „minidlna”, you have to set the ACL of the db_dir accordingly:

sudo mkdir /var/cache/minidlna
sudo chown -R minidlna.minidlna /var/cache/minidlna
sudo chmod 744 /var/cache/minidlna

With that, minidlna started without a hitch.

P.S.: If using a firewall the the 1900/udp and 8200/tcp ports will need to be opened:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport 1900 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8200 -j ACCEPT

Tagged as: dnlna, linux, minidlna, ReadyMedia, ubuntu | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Donnerstag, 20130815, 18:59 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)