From NAS-Central Buffalo - The Linkstation Wiki

Latest revision as of 10:14, 11 January 2009

Overview

GMediaServer is a UPnP compatible media server for the GNU system. It is part of the GNU project.

GMediaServer serves audio and video files to certain network connected media players. Most hardware media players only play music and/or video—they don't provide the media themselves. Those media files have to come from a device on the network. GMediaServer is a server for such UPnP compatible media players, including:

• NETGEAR Wireless Digital Music Player (MP101)
• Linksys Wireless-B Music System (WMLS11B), Wireless-B Media Link for Music (WML11B)
• Philips Streamium SL300i, Streamium RC9800i, Streamium SLA5520
• Omnifi DMS1
• SMC EZ Stream 11Mbps Wireless Audio Adaptor (SMCWAA-B)
• D-Link DSM-520 Wireless HD Media Player
• Roku SoundBridge Network Music Player M1000
• Terratec NOXON audio, NOXON 2 audio
• Pinnacle ShowCenter 200
• XBMC (X-Box Media Center, 2.0+ Edition(s))

Other UPnP media players (including software based) may work as well—see the manual for a more complete list.

GMediaServer is written in C by Oskar Liljeblad. It should compile and run on any modern POSIX compatible system such as GNU/Linux. GMediaServer is a console based application which is usually run in the background. It is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

FreeLink

You need to install at least the g++ (you might have the rest) from the build-essential packages (i.e., libc6-dev gcc g++ make dpkg-dev):

apt-get install g++

Apt get dependancies

apt-get install libmagic1 libmagic-dev libid3-3.8.3 libtagc0 libtagc0-dev libuuid1 uuid-dev 

Then get the source files install them

wget http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/gmediaserver/gmediaserver-0.12.0.tar.gz
wget http://ovh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/upnp/libupnp-1.3.1.tar.gz

Configure, make and install libupnp1.3.1

tar -xvzf libupnp-1.3.1.tar.gz 
cd libupnp-1.3.1
./configure
make 
make install

Then configure, make and install gmediaserver

tar -xvzf gmediaserver-0.12.0.tar.gz 
cd gmediaserver-0.12.0 
./configure --prefix=/mnt/hda/gmedia
make
make install

OpenLink (MIPSel)

Pre-requisites

1. Linkstation2
2. OpenLink - mipsel-openlink-052b.zip (from the downloads section and installed as per README).
3. Precompiled C development environment, running on the LS - mipsel-tools-2.tgz (from the downloads section and installed with the install.sh).
4. mipsel-screen-1.tgz (from the downloads section and installed with the install.sh). (NOT REQUIRED but the compile takes ages and this helps if you get disconnected when it is running).
5. /usr/bin/sort extracted from the debian package coreutils-5.2.

 Additional Note: I had trouble finding these but I'm no Linux expert. 
 Eventually I found them on debian package site: here I happily used version 5.97-5.3 on LS2. 
 Use wget to get the file, then mkdir tmp; cd tmp; ar x ../downloadedfilename; tar -xvzf data.tar.gz; cp -ir ./usr/sort /usr; rm -r *

1. gmediaserver-latest.tar.gz from http://www.gnu.org/software/gmediaserver/
2. obtain required libraries.

Required Libraries

The libraries were downloaded from my local debian mirror and I used alien -t <debfile> to convert them to tgz files which were extracted into the root of the link station.

 Additional Note: No idea what alien is, so I found the stuff here under libraries.
 Use wget to get the files, then mkdir tmp; cd tmp; ar x ../downloadedfilename; tar -xvzf data.tar.gz; cp -ir ./usr/* /usr; rm -r *; repeat for each library. 

• libid3-3.8.3-3.8.3.tgz
• libupnp-dev-1.2.1.tgz
• libid3-3.8.3-dev-3.8.3.tgz
• libupnp0-1.2.1.tgz

Procedure

wget http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/gmediaserver/gmediaserver-0.12.0.tar.gz
tar -xvzf gmediaserver-0.12.0.tar.gz 
cd gmediaserver-0.12.0 
./configure --prefix=/mnt/hda/gmedia
make
make install

Configuration

• If you add media you should restart the server as it will need to rescan the directories*
• Insert init script into /etc/init.d (See Below)

cd /etc/rc.d/rc2.d
ln -s ../init.d/gmserver S98gmserver
cd ../rc0.d
ln -s ../init.d/gmserver K02gmserver
cd ../rc6.d
ln -s ../init.d/gmserver K02gmserver

• Disable the pcast server (use the web interface).

Additional note:
 * Disable the pcast server (use the web interface). (it's so good I thought I'd mention it twice). You will get UPNP failed to bond/work/reach/something like that otherwise.   Basically PCAST will hog the stuff you want to use.

• Run the gmedia init script with a start parameter. (this is the script below - create a file called gmedia in /etc/init.d/ called gmedia and add the script contents below. Don't forget to chmod +x afterwards if you want to execute it.)

Additional note:
 I would suggest not rushing in above as if the server fails to start you won't know.
 why not start simply:
 cd /mnt/hda/gmedia/bin
 ./gmediaserver -ieth0 -v4 music directory e.g. /mnt/hda/media

• Wait a while as it scans the whole collection on every startup. (or just point it to one directory with a couple of files while you get it working!)

( you should edit the script to change the directory that should be shared. )

#!/bin/sh
#
# gmediaserver - startup script for gmediaserver 
# This goes in /etc/init.d and gets run at boot-time.
#
# . /etc/timezone

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin

GM_HOME=/mnt/hda/gmedia
NAME=`hostname`
# Edit this following line to point to your media
DIR=/mnt/hda/share/home_backup/media/mp3

if ! [ -x $GM_HOME/bin/gmediaserver ]; then
       exit 0
fi


case "$1" in

   start)
       echo  "Start services: gmediaserver"
       # Next line failed for me - seems to be an issue with logging. Hence commented out and redone.
       #$GM_HOME/bin/gmediaserver -b -i eth0 --friendly-name=$NAME \
       #    -o $GM_HOME/log/server.log -v1 $DIR
       $GM_HOME/bin/gmediaserver -b -i eth0 --friendly-name=$NAME -v1 $DIR
       ;;
   stop)
       echo  "Stop services: gmediaserver"
       /sbin/start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exec $GM_HOME/bin/gmediaserver
       ;;
   restart)
       # this didn't work for me.... Commented out and redone. 
       # stop
       /sbin/start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exec $GM_HOME/bin/gmediaserver
       sleep 1
       # this didn't work for me.... Commented out and redone. 
       # start
       $GM_HOME/bin/gmediaserver -b -i eth0 --friendly-name=$NAME -v1 $DIR
       ;;
   *)
   echo "usage: $0 { start | stop | restart}" >&2
   exit 1
   ;; 
                                                                                             
esac

exit 0