Ushare - UPnP Media Server for Linux

Introduction

uShare^[1]^[2] is a Upnp (TM) A/V Media Server based on GmediaServer^[3]. It implements the server component that provides UPnP media devices with information on available multimedia files. uShare uses the built-in http server of libupnp to stream the files to clients. uShare is written for the GeeXboX^[4] project. It is designed to provide access to multimedia contents to GeeXboX but can of course be used by any other UPnP client device. It should compile and run on any modern POSIX compatible system such as Linux. uShare is free software - it is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Supported File Formats List

Video files : asf, avi, dv, divx, wmv, mjpg, mjpeg, mpeg, mpg, mpe, mp2p, vob, mp2t, m1v, m2v, m4v, m4p, mp4ps, ts, ogm, mkv, rmvb, mov, qt
Audio files : ac, ac3, aif, aiff, at3p, au, snd, dts, rmi, mp1, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpa, ogg, wav, pcm, lpcm, l16, wma, mka, ra, rm, ram
Image files : bmp, ico, gif, jpeg, jpg, jpe, pcd, png, pnm, ppm, qti, qtf, qtif, tif, tiff
Playlist files : pls, m3u, asx
Subtitle files : dks, idx, mpl, pjs, psb, scr, srt, ssa, stl, sub, tts, vsf, zeg
Various text files : bup, ifo

Supported Devices

Xbox 360
D-Link DSM-320
Roku SoundBridge M2000 Network Music Player devices
and others

Installation

The following UPnP library is required to build and run uShare: Linux SDK for UPnP Devices (libupnp), 1.3.1 or later ^[5]

OpenLink - Ipkg (PowerPC)

Install Ipkg on the Linkstation (for end-users) and enable the NSLU2 Feed: Ipkg Package List: PowerPC
Install ushare and libupnp, libdlna, ffmpeg

ipkg install libupnp libdlna ffmpeg ushare

On my HS, ipkg installed uShare into /opt/bin/ so I had to create a link to it from /bin:

cd /bin
ln /opt/bin/ushare ushare

ARM9(Stock Firmware)

Manual download

ushare-1.2a+libupnp-1.6.6_bin.tgz

ushare-1.0+libupnp-1.4.6_arm9.tgz

Install

cd /tmp
wget http://downloads.buffalo.nas-central.org/Users/kaiten/ushare-1.0+libupnp-1.4.6_arm9.tgz
tar -C / -xzvf ushare-1.0+libupnp-1.4.6_arm9.tgz
ldconfig -v

Edit /usr/local/etc/ushare.conf

# /etc/ushare.conf
# Configuration file for uShare

# uShare UPnP Friendly Name (default is 'uShare').
USHARE_NAME=uShare

# Interface to listen to (default is eth0).
# Ex : USHARE_IFACE=eth1
USHARE_IFACE=eth0

# Port to listen to (default is random from IANA Dynamic Ports range)
# Ex : USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_PORT=49200

# Directories to be shared (space or CSV list).
# Ex: USHARE_DIR=/dir1,/dir2
USHARE_DIR=/mnt/disk1/root/Music,/mnt/disk1/root/pictures,/mnt/disk1/root/Video

# Use to override what happens when iconv fails to parse a file name.
# The default uShare behaviour is to not add the entry in the media list
# This option overrides that behaviour and adds the non-iconv'ed string into
# the media list, with the assumption that the renderer will be able to
# handle it. Devices like Noxon 2 have no problem with strings being passed
# as is. (Umlauts for all!)
#
# Options are TRUE/YES/1 for override and anything else for default behaviour
USHARE_OVERRIDE_ICONV_ERR=true

# Enable Web interface (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_WEB=yes

# Enable Telnet control interface (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_TELNET=no

# Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_XBOX=no

# Use DLNA profile (yes/no) if libdlna is also used.
# This is not needed with this custom3 build of uShare-1.1a
# This is needed for PlayStation3 to work (among other devices)
USHARE_ENABLE_DLNA=yes

#EOF

Start

/etc/init.d/ushare start

Package Changes:

Moved everything to /usr/local/, with the execption of the init script..

Package Contents:

./etc/init.d/ushare
./usr/local/bin/ushare
./usr/local/etc/ushare.conf
./usr/local/include/upnp/ixml.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/FreeList.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/LinkedList.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/ThreadPool.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/TimerThread.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/iasnprintf.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/ithread.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/upnpconfig.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/upnp.h
./usr/local/include/upnp/upnptools.h
./usr/local/lib/libixml.so.2.0.3
./usr/local/lib/libixml.so.2
./usr/local/lib/libixml.so
./usr/local/lib/libixml.la
./usr/local/lib/libixml.a
./usr/local/lib/libthreadutil.so.2.1.0
./usr/local/lib/libthreadutil.so.2
./usr/local/lib/libthreadutil.so
./usr/local/lib/libthreadutil.la
./usr/local/lib/libthreadutil.a
./usr/local/lib/libupnp.so.2.0.3
./usr/local/lib/libupnp.so.2
./usr/local/lib/libupnp.so
./usr/local/lib/libupnp.la
./usr/local/lib/libupnp.a
./usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/libupnp.pc
./usr/local/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/ushare.mo
./usr/local/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/ushare.mo
./usr/local/share/man/man1/ushare.1

Note: If installing over an earlier version, remove the ushare binary from /usr/bin/

Todo: Install script to check for older versions & config duplication.

Compile from Source

Install the Precompiled C development environment, running on the LS
Then get the source files install them

wget http://ushare.geexbox.org/releases/ushare-0.9.7.tar.bz2
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 ushare

tar -xvjf ushare-0.9.7.tar.bz2
cd ushare-0.9.7
./configure (--prefix=/usr/local --sysconfdir=/etc)?
make 
make install

Configuration

At first you need to be sure that you have setup a multicast route for UPnP messages. If you don't but have a default route attributed, then this later will be used. Otherwise, simply declare a new route for UPnP multicasts (for example using eth0 interface) :

route add -net 239.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 eth0

To complete the installation, you must edit /etc/ushare.conf or /opt/etc/ushare.conf on an ipkg install to add the location(s) of your media files.

/etc/ushare.conf

# /etc/ushare.conf
# Configuration file for uShare

# uShare UPnP Friendly Name (default is 'uShare').
USHARE_NAME=

# Interface to listen to (default is eth0).
# Ex : USHARE_IFACE=eth1
USHARE_IFACE=

# Port to listen to (default is random from IANA Dynamic Ports range)
# Ex : USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_PORT=49200

# Port to listen for Telnet connections
# Ex : USHARE_TELNET_PORT=1337
USHARE_TELNET_PORT=

# Directories to be shared (space or CSV list).
# Ex: USHARE_DIR=/dir1,/dir2
USHARE_DIR=/mnt/share/storage,/mnt/share/My-Documents/iTunes-Music,/mnt/share/My-Documents/my-Pictures

# Use to override what happens when iconv fails to parse a file name.
# The default uShare behaviour is to not add the entry in the media list
# This option overrides that behaviour and adds the non-iconv'ed string into
# the media list, with the assumption that the renderer will be able to
# handle it. Devices like Noxon 2 have no problem with strings being passed
# as is. (Umlauts for all!)
#
# Options are TRUE/YES/1 for override and anything else for default behaviour
USHARE_OVERRIDE_ICONV_ERR=

# Enable Web interface (yes/no)
ENABLE_WEB=yes

# Enable Telnet control interface (yes/no)
ENABLE_TELNET=

# Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
ENABLE_XBOX=yes

# Use DLNA profile (yes/no)
# This is needed for PlayStation3 to work (among other devices)
ENABLE_DLNA=

Then you can create a start/stop script

/etc/init.d/ushare

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Required-Start: $local_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:  2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: start and stop ushare
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/ushare
NAME=ushare
DESC="uShare UPnP A/V Media Server"
PIDFILE=/var/run/ushare.pid

[ -r "/etc/ushare.conf" ] && . /etc/ushare.conf

# abort if no executable exists
[ -x $DAEMON ] || exit 0

# abort if no shared directory is defined
[ -z "$USHARE_DIR" ] && exit 0

set -e

checkpid() {
  [ -e $PIDFILE ] || touch $PIDFILE
}
case "$1" in
  start)
    echo -n "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
    checkpid
    start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --background --oknodo \
      --make-pidfile --pidfile $PIDFILE \
      --exec $DAEMON -- $USHARE_OPTIONS
    echo "."
  ;;
 stop)
    echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
    start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 2 --quiet --oknodo --pidfile $PIDFILE
    echo "."
  ;;
  reload|force-reload)
    echo -n "Reloading $DESC: $NAME"
    start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --oknodo --pidfile $PIDFILE --e$
    echo "."
  ;;
  reload|force-reload)
    echo -n "Reloading $DESC: $NAME"
    start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --oknodo --pidfile $PIDFILE --e$
    echo "."
  ;;
  restart)
    $0 stop
    $1 start
  ;;
  *)
    N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
    echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
    exit 2
  ;;
esac

exit 0

Run at Startup

And run the following to have it startup and stop on system start/shutdown

cd /etc/rc.d/rc2.d
ln -s ../init.d/ushare S99ushare
cd ../rc0.d
ln -s ../init.d/ushare K02ushare
cd ../rc6.d
ln -s ../init.d/ushare K02ushare

Usage

uShare runs from the console only. It supports the usual --help option which displays usage and option information.

Command Line Options

uShare (version 1.1a), a lightweight UPnP A/V and DLNA Media Server.
Benjamin Zores (C) 2005-2007, for GeeXboX Team.
See http://ushare.geexbox.org/ for updates.

Usage: ushare [-n name] [-i interface] [-p port] [-c directory] [[-c directory]...]
Options:
 -n, --name=NAME        Set UPnP Friendly Name (default is 'uShare')
 -i, --interface=IFACE  Use IFACE Network Interface (default is 'eth0')
 -f, --cfg=FILE         Config file to be used
 -p, --port=PORT        Forces the HTTP server to run on PORT
 -q, --telnet-port=PORT Forces the TELNET server to run on PORT
 -c, --content=DIR      Share the content of DIR directory
 -w, --no-web           Disable the control web page (enabled by default)
 -t, --no-telnet        Disable the TELNET control (enabled by default)
 -o, --override-iconv-err       If iconv fails parsing name, still add to media contents (hoping the renderer can handle it)
 -v, --verbose          Set verbose display
 -x, --xbox             Use XboX 360 compliant profile
 -d, --dlna             Use DLNA compliant profile (PlayStation3 needs this)
 -D, --daemon           Run as a daemon
 -V, --version          Display the version of uShare and exit
 -h, --help             Display this help

uShare expects at least one directory argument (-c argument), specifying where multimedia files are stored. You should probably also use the -i option to specify which interface uShare should listen on.

 ushare -i eth0 -c /shares

Web Interface

You can also perform remote control of uShare UPnP Media Server through its web interface. This let you define new content locations at runtime or update the currently shared one in case the filesystem has changed. After starting ushare you can go to the web interface to manage it's shares: http://linkstation:49200/web/ushare.html

After starting ushare you can go to the web interface to manage it's shares: http://linkstation:49200/web/ushare.html

References

↑ GeeXboX uShare : A free UPnP A/V Media Server for Linux.
↑ Ushare - GeeXboX wiki
↑ GMediaServer : the original Media Server on which uShare was based.
↑ GeeXboX : the Linux multimedia distribution that uses djmount to provide access to UPnP contents.
↑ SDK for UPnP Devices (libupnp): An Open Source UPnP Development Kit.

[1] GeeXboX uShare : A free UPnP A/V Media Server for Linux.

[2] Ushare - GeeXboX wiki

[3] GMediaServer : the original Media Server on which uShare was based.

[4] GeeXboX : the Linux multimedia distribution that uses djmount to provide access to UPnP contents.

[5] SDK for UPnP Devices (libupnp): An Open Source UPnP Development Kit.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

Ushare - UPnP Media Server for Linux

Contents

Introduction

Supported File Formats List

Supported Devices

Installation

OpenLink - Ipkg (PowerPC)

ARM9(Stock Firmware)

Manual download

Install

Start

Compile from Source

Configuration

/etc/ushare.conf

/etc/init.d/ushare

Run at Startup

Usage

Command Line Options

Web Interface

References

Navigation menu

Views

Personal tools

Buffalo Portal

Main Portal

Communication

Downloads

Hacking-pages-links

Distributions

Projects

Search

Tools