DLNA on Lubuntu for PS3, iPad and Android

Here we go again, a quick write-up of my experiences setting up a DLNA server on Lubuntu 12.10 (on an eeePC).

So, what's DLNA? DLNA is a HTTP-based XML format (via uPNP) for providing and delivering streamed media over a network. So, it's the usual broadcast story of uPNP and request/response over web services.

So, you obviously need a DLNA server and for this I chose miniDLNA simply because the DLNA server was going to be run on an eeePC netbook, so I needed as lightweight implementation as possible. The fact that it is command line only also helped (I'm a command-line freak).

Installing miniDLNA is as simple as usual when using a Debian-style OS :

$ sudo apt-get install minidlna

Once installed, the config file is in /etc/minidlna.conf and has the usual entries such as default listening port (8200) and the media folders to actually share your stuff from, defaulting to /opt but it should really be changed to something other than this, say /home/user/media.

Now, assuming that all your firewall/iptables setup allows the uPNP and port 8200 traffic, then you need to start the DLNA server. There are a couple of ways to do this, the simplest being :

$ minidlna

which will run as a daemon. All log files will go to /var/log (unless specified otherwise in the config file).

You can, however, run it non-daemonized (in the current shell process) in debug mode which allows you to see the error / log messages via stdout (useful to see what clients are actually sending in the HTTP POST requests etc.), i.e.

$ minidlna -d

Once this is done, then all DLNA clients should see the DLNA server, certainly the iPad3 and PS3 did successfully. You do, of course, then have problem of media compatibility between the clients, iPADs only support MP4 and MOV by default etc. etc., but that's another story...