Media Server

Modern devices as smart TV's, smart Phones, Tablet PC can be connected to a media server to view movies, watch pictures and listen to music. Of course mediaserver and client can run on the same PC.

There is the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) that defines standards and also certifies devices to be inter-operable to exchange multimedia data. However there are also other standards as Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).

Gerbera

https://gerbera.io/ is an evolution of mediatomb

medaitomb is not a DLNA server it is a UPnP server but it has some DLNA support that is good enough for most users.

/etc/gerbera/config.xml is the config file. Add unique name in this file. Gerbera uses a database that can be configured via its web browser interface, and not in the config.xml file. When done with the configuration, consider to disable the ui for security reasons to prevent users to read.

On a OpenRC system /etc/init.d/gerbera start and if happy rc-update add gerbera default

cat /var/log/gerbera.log

In a browser open http://192.168.1.<x>:49152 and configure here what gerbera should show.

Under Gentoo Linux /var/lib/gerbera holds the database

cat /var/log/gerbera.log to see if it is happy

Samsung TVs

Unfortunately Samsung TVs might not play anything with the default settings. To have them working, the following has to be added to /etc/gerbera/config.xml :

<protocolInfo extend="yes"/> 
<custom-http-headers>
  <add header="transferMode.dlna.org: Streaming"/>
  <add header="contentFeatures.dlna.org: DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=017000 00000000000000000000000000"/>
</custom-http-headers>

minidlna

Something small that creates access from a TV to a PC server is minidlna

/usr/sbin/minidlnad to start, however it is intended to start is as a system process as systemd or openRC

/etc/conf.d/minidlna and /etc/minidlna.conf hold the configuration

/etc/init.d/minidlna the openRC script

rc-update add minidlna default to have it started after boot

/var/log/minidlna/ where the logs go

UPnP clients

After having a server also a UPnP client (other than a TV) might be desirable.

djmount allows to mount a UPnP media server as linux filesystem. After that any program can be used to access the files.


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