minidlna

How to install minidlna on a Raspberry Pi

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In this posting we are going to turn a Raspberry Pi into a media streaming device, using minidlna.

Preparation of the Raspberry Pi

  • Follow the instructions at How to install the Raspbian OS on a Raspberry Pi.
  • Change the hostname of your Raspberry Pi to something more meaningful by logging on to the device as user “pi” and issuing the command:

    sudo raspi-config

  • Select “Advanced Options” and set the following:
    • Hostname = pi-media (or whatever you want to call it).
  • Select Finish
  • Reboot the Raspberry Pi

Install minidlna

  • First, make sure that the package indexes are up to date with:

    sudo apt-get update

  • Installing the minidlna package is as easy as entering the commands:


    sudo apt-get install minidlna
    sudo chown minidlna:minidlna /var/lib/minidlna

  • On completion, create a directory in which the media you wish to stream will be stored. For the moment we will save some media to subdirectories under /home/pi on the Raspberry Pi’s SD card, but once we are happy it is working, we will mount an external hard disk and serve the media up from that. For now, type:


    mkdir -p "/home/pi/media/videos"
    mkdir -p "/home/pi/media/pictures"
    mkdir -p "/home/pi/media/music"

  • To ensure that the minidlna user has the privilege to read from the directories under the pi user, add minidlna to the pi user group with:

    sudo usermod -a -G pi minidlna

  • Now we will create the directories which will be used for storing the minidlna database and the log files:


    sudo mkdir /var/{cache,log}/minidlna
    sudo chown minidlna:minidlna /var/{cache,log}/minidlna

  • The next step is to make some changes to the minidlna configuration file. Open the file for editing with:


    sudo vi /etc/minidlna.conf

    …and make the following changes (changing the IP address to match your Raspberry Pi. If you’re not sure of the IP address, use the ifconfig command):
    media_dir=A,/home/pi/media/music
    media_dir=P,/home/pi/media/pictures
    media_dir=V,/home/pi/media/videos
    db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
    log_dir=/var/log/minidlna
    listening_ip=192.168.XXX.XXX
    inotify=yes
    notify_interval=300

  • Open the sysctl.conf file for editing with:


    sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf

    …and add the following to the bottom of the file:
    # minidlna server tweaks
    fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 100000
    # end of minidlna server tweaks

  • Rebuild the database and restart minidlna with:


    sudo service minidlna stop
    sudo service minidlna force-reload
    sudo service minidlna start

You can now add music, pictures and videos to the respective directories under /home/pi/media.