MediaTomb - Free UPnP MediaServer

From NAS-Central Buffalo - The Linkstation Wiki

Revision as of 19:49, 25 November 2009

Overview

MediaTomb is an open source (GPL) UPnP MediaServer with a nice web user interface, it allows you to stream your digital media through your home network and listen to/watch it on a variety of UPnP compatible devices.

MediaTomb implements the UPnP MediaServer V 1.0 specification that can be found on http://www.upnp.org/.

Currently Supported Features

• browse and playback your media via UPnP
• metadata extraction from mp3, ogg, flac, jpeg, etc. files.
• Exif thumbnail support
• user defined server layout based on extracted metadata (scriptable virtual containers)
• automatic directory rescans
• sophisticated web UI with a tree view of the database and the file system, allowing to add/remove/edit/browse your media
• support for external URLs (create links to internet content and serve them via UPnP to your renderer)
• support for ContentDirectoryService container updates
• Active Items (experimental feature), allows execution of server side scripts upon HTTP GET requests to certain items
• highly flexible configuration, allowing you to control the behavior of various features of the server

Installation

OpenLink (PowerPC)

• Install Ipkg on the Linkstation (for end-users) and enable the NSLU2 Feed: Ipkg Package List: PowerPC
• Install mediatomb with ipkg, which will also install the following dependancies: file, zlib, ossp-js, libexif, sqlite, readline, ncurses, id3lib, libstdc++

ipkg install mediatomb 

• Run MediaTomb (as a daemon)

mediatomb -d   

• Configure shares on web interface

go to http://linkstation:49152 to set up shares

OpenLink (MIPSEL)

once the linkstation is opened up and you have telnet access, go to:

http://mediatomb.cc/pages/download

and find the appropriate file for your linkstation under the static binaries area. For the linkstation 2 it is mediatomb-static-0.11.0-r2-linux-uclibc-mips2el.tar.gz. at the command prompt on your linkstation go somewhere to store the file:

cd /mnt/hda/
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mediato...2el.tar.gz (or appropriate location)
tar -xvzf mediatomb-static-0.11.0-r2-linux-uclibc-mips2el.tar.gz
then simply type:
cd mediatomb
./mediatomb.sh
to start it up.

FreeLink

Although it's not a great idea to use Ipkg and apt on the same box Ipkg seems to keep most of it's files separate in /opt/bin. The above feed/method could only be used for a PowerPC linkstation.

There are instructions for installing mediatomb on Ubuntu linux but they are somewhat specific to ubuntu.

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=397026

ARM

• this is my fast way to install:

apt-get install libnspr4-0d libmozjs0d
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mediatomb/mediatomb_0.10.0-1etch1_arm.deb
dpkg -i mediatomb_0.10.0-1etch1_arm.deb

• alternative install method - adding the debian repository from MediaTomb Downloads:

1. add
   deb http://apt.mediatomb.cc/ etch main
   to your /etc/apt/sources.list
2. install the gpg key for this repository and then install mediatomb:

wget http://apt.mediatomb.cc/key.asc -O- -q | apt-key add -
apt-get update
apt-get install mediatomb

• after that run mediatomb

mediatomb

it starts server, in bottom of output you can see the internet address for remote control after first loading stop mediatomb by ctrl+c

it auto-creates config files on /root/.mediatomb/

• Add Playstation 3 DIVX streaming support:

nano /root/.mediatomb/config.xml

• under <server> add

<protocolInfo extend="yes"/>

• after <extension-mimetype ignore-unknown="no"> add

<map from="avi" to="video/divx"/>

restart mediatomb

on web admin add your shared folder (remove and repopulate database)

Compiling from source

• to be done, a number of dependancies would have to be resolved... Spidermonkey seems like to most difficult one

see http://mediatomb.cc/pages/documentation#id2458225

Usage Options

Usage: mediatomb [options]

Supported options:
   --ip or -i         ip address
   --port or -p       server port (the SDK only permits values => 49152)
   --config or -c     configuration file to use
   --daemon or -d     run server in background
   --pidfile or -P    file to hold the process id
    --user or -u       run server under specified username
   --group or -g      run server under specified group
   --add or -a        add the given file/directory
   --logfile or -l    log to specified file
   --help or -h       this help message

Enabling auto start

The current ipkg package provides an init script with some additional configuration. To enable automatic startup of the MediaTomb daemon edit /opt/etc/default/mediatomb and change the value of MT_ENABLE to true. After that start the daemon by issuing the following command:

/opt/etc/init.d/S90mediatomb start

In this configuration MediaTomb will listen on port 50500, this behavior can be changed by editing /opt/etc/mediatomb.conf and restarting the server which can by done by:

/opt/etc/init.d/S90mediatomb restart

The config.xml and the database of the daemon configuration will be created in /opt/etc/mediatomb after the first launch.

If you encounter strange behavior or are not sure what is going on, have a look at the log output which will be located in /opt/var/log/mediatomb