Home » Multimedia » How to setup MiniDLNA, DLNA server on Ubuntu ?

How to setup MiniDLNA, DLNA server on Ubuntu ?

MiniDLNA is server software with the aim of being fully compliant with DLNA/UPnP clients. The MiniDNLA daemon serves media files (music, pictures, and video) to clients on a network. Example clients include applications such as totem and xbmc, and devices such as portable media players, smartphones, and televisions.

MiniDLNA is a simple, lightweight alternative to MediaTomb, but has fewer features. It does not have a web interface for administration and must be configured by editing a text file.

MiniDLNA can be installed on Ubuntu using below command,

$ sudo apt-get install minidlna

Once we install minidlna, we need to configure the same to inform it the file location of our audio, video and image files. This can be done by editing /etc/minidlna.conf as below,

$ vim sudo vim /etc/minidlna.conf
# Path to the directory you want scanned for media files.
#
# This option can be specified more than once if you want multiple directories
# scanned.
#
# If you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you can
# prepend the directory name with a letter representing the type (A, P or V),
# followed by a comma, as so:
#   * "A" for audio    (eg. media_dir=A,/var/lib/minidlna/music)
#   * "P" for pictures (eg. media_dir=P,/var/lib/minidlna/pictures)
#   * "V" for video    (eg. media_dir=V,/var/lib/minidlna/videos)
#   * "PV" for pictures and video (eg. media_dir=PV,/var/lib/minidlna/digital_camera)
media_dir=/var/lib/minidlna

Above is the default configuration file where we need to change it as,

media_dir=V,/home/devlab/Desktop/multimedia/videos
media_dir=A,/home/devlab/Desktop/multimedia/music
media_dir=P,/home/devlab/Desktop/multimedia/photos

Note : This assumes our photos, videos and music files are kept at /home/devlab/Desktop/multimedia/ folder on your machine. You can change this to whichever path you want to use.

Now, we need to restart the minidlna server as,

$ sudo service minidlna force-reload
$ sudo service minidlna restart

Reference – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA


Subscribe our Rurban Life YouTube Channel.. "Rural Life, Urban LifeStyle"

Leave a Comment