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Linux NAS media sharing with DLNA: ReadyMedia/minidlna

Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013

As part of my low power mini Linux NAS project, I wanted to be able to share photos and videos simply to other devices on the local network, specifically a TV (it’s nice to be able to browse photos there).

Requirements:

  • Runs as a service on a Linux server (no GUI)
  • Simple to configure (so I can forget about it)
  • Works with a Samsung Smart TV

I can live without transcoding and fancy stuff, so after looking at Servio (full-featured, nice – tested it on Windows too) and ushare (looks good but less maintained currently),  I came to the conclusion that ReadyMedia (formerly minidlna) looked like the simplest and best solution. (It’s incidentally developed by Netgear for their ReadyNAS products)

Installing ReadyMedia/minidlna on RHEL6

Unfortunately, (due to some of the media libraries it depends on not being available in RHEL/EPEL, presumably due to patent or licensing issues), ReadyShare is not available in the “usual” repositories such as EPEL. However, I found a package over on the li.nux.ro site which I’m not familiar with. The version wasn’t current, and a couple of things needed fixing (including the init file), so I updated the package and rebuilt – the built packages are below:

Configuring ReadyMedia/minidlna

Configuring ReadyMedia is extremely simple – it suffices in the first instance to just define where your media are located with one or more media_dir directives:

media_dir=P,/path/to/Pictures
media_dir=A,/path/to/Music

I also set friendly_name (to specify a name that will be shown up on other devices) and shrank notify_interval (to try to pick up newly-added files faster).

Then, start the service (service minidlna start) and browse from another device on the network that supports DLNA (e.g. TV). Works!