Streaming movies and music from Ubuntu to Xbox 360

Since Ushare seems to not work with Ubuntu 9.10, I decided to change application, and what I found is MiniDLNA.

The installation process is not automatic, but it is very easy:

Download the package from here, or grab the latest one from the site (current one is 1.0.16-pre7 1.0.16.3).

Unpack it:

tar -zxvf minidlna_1.0.16.3_static.tar.gz

Copy the only 2 files in your system:

sudo cp etc/minidlna.conf /etc/

sudo cp usr/sbin/minidlna /usr/sbin/

Now we need to edit the config file, adding the paths we want to share.

I noticed that parsing a large number of files takes a lot of time, so I decided to share only the directories where I have movies (and not my Music library).

sudo gedit /etc/minidlna.conf

This is my minidlna.conf:

port=8200
media_dir=V,/home/scognito/Video
media_dir=V,/home/scognito/Scrivania
friendly_name=Headache
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
album_art_names=Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albumart.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg
inotify=yes
enable_tivo=no
strict_dlna=no
presentation_url=http://192.168.0.2:8200
notify_interval=900
serial=111222333
model_number=1

It’s almost the same as the default one, don’t forget to add as many media_dir as you need, set your friendly_name (the name your Xbox will see your pc), and most important, the presentation_url, otherwise pc will not be visibile from the Xbox (set it as your pc ip:port)

Start it and enjoy, your shares will be visible to your Xbox 360!

sudo /usr/sbin/minidlna

It will start in daemon mode (you can use the -d flag to debug if you have issues).

If you need to start MiniDLNA automatically at each boot, do the following:

Go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications, click Add, and use these settings:

Name: minidlna
Command: /usr/sbin/minidlna

Confirm, and MiniDLNA will start at each boot

Update: Version 1.0.16.3 added support for storing the db in a directory different than the default /tmp, so that informations will not be removed after each reboot (variable db_dir in the minidlna.conf)!

~ di Scognito su novembre 18, 2009.