I have a wonderful little setup at home, a Ubuntu Media Server running Boxee in the basement, makes the experience watching tv a wonderful thing. Views all my movies, TV online and a ton of fun other little features.
But one thing was missing. My Google TV was cut off from the Pack, I couldn’t watch my movies in the living room that were on the Media Server in the basement, not very “Home of the Future”. So I set out trying to find the right extra component to throw into the mix in the Lair to make the media experience in the rest of the house that much sweeter.
That last missing piece is MiniDLNA! That last missing piece is a lightweight dlna server that runs in the background making it all work. Currently watching Star Wars with my kids!
And here is how you do it. The Files are on Sourceforge
The Following Process is adapted from Ben Hedrington’s wonderful guide
GET the files:
mkdir mini
cd mini
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/files/minidlna/1.0.22/minidlna_1.0.22_static.tar.gz
Extract the files:
tar -zxvf minidlna_1.0.22_static.tar.gz
Move the files to the right home:
cd [Where you extracted the tar.gz]
sudo cp -R ./usr/* /usr/
sudo cp ./etc/minidlna.conf /etc/
Configure minidlna.conf file.
sudo vi /etc/minidlna.conf
Change these settings. Set your file directories A=Audio, P=Pictures and V=Video.
media_dir=A,/media/data/music
media_dir=P,/media/data/camera
media_dir=V,/media/data/videos
Name your server.
friendly_name=The CaffiNation Station
Ctrl-C : wq… and Boom!
You’re set to jet!
/usr/sbin/minidlna -f -R /etc/minidlna.conf
EDIT: I recently found out you need to make sure two things happen. first that the drive you are storing your media on is automatically mounted. That is the topic for a whole different post. But you also need to make sure the server is actively looking into the directory when you start it. This was accomplished by adding in the -R flag to the last statement. And it now works well for any copy and paste techs out there to get the service up and running.