minidlna

When talking about digital music servers other than Squeezebox Server, I feel like a cheater. It’s been my reliable go-to method for serving up my ripped and downloaded music for over a decade now. But not every piece of hardware speaks to it; Beep appeared a while back and saw me install miniDLNA on my linux box, where all my music files reside.

The Digital Living Network Alliance is a trade group that certifies compliance to a standard for delivering digital media. MiniDLNA is an implementation for Ubuntu, and mini it is! No interface (save a bare bones web page at port 8200), it is configured by editing /etc/minidlna.conf.

Set the path to your music; I’m only looking for audio files, so I mark the directory with an A.
#media_dir=/var/lib/minidlna
media_dir=A,/mnt/data/music

Set the database cache directory (important!) and enable logging:
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
log_dir=/var/log

Tell it to look for new files or not:
inotify=yes

Enable links outside user-defined media_dirs:
wide_links=yes

Set the name of the server presented to clients. This provides a simple way to check if you’re connecting to you server.
friendly_name=My-MiniDLNA

That’s it! Restart the service after you make changes to the configuration,
sudo service minidlna restart

or rebuild the database if you’ve changed or added music.
sudo service minidlna force-reload

There’s a ton more it can do, including serving videos, pictures, etc, and it also offers per-user configuration as well; but for my purpose my newly acquired Oppo BVD-103 can now stream all the music on my computer.

EDIT: Also including a link for the bubblesoft add-on server. I use this with the Bubblesoft app to access MiniDLNA on my Android phone. Uses java and requires port 58050 to be open.

On the web:
MiniDLNA Ubuntu
ReadyMedia
bubblesoft

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