Something a bit odd here.
I have videos on my Desktop in AVI format.
If I put them on a pen drive and plug it into my TV or xbox they both play the files fine.
But if I try to play the same files directly from my Desktop via uShare, both the TV and xbox say file type not supported.
Any ideas?
uShare/minidlna “streams” video … it doesn’t pass the file exactly the same way as if it where on a USB stick (local file) … so it could be a format/codec issue.
You may need to re-encode it for it to stream properly … do ANY videos stream properly ?
I haven’t used uShare for quite some time … I’ve found minidlna much better.
There’s a tutorial for setting up minidlna on here somewhere.
Actually … I thought YOU were using minidlna ?
Actually .. I thought YOU were using minidlna ?Lol So did I, but I think that was on the lappy (which is currently on the fritz) Is there a way (which is what I essentially want to do) of using the desktop as an NAS.
Yup … for all intents and purposes it’s already a NAS … it can stream media, serve files via it’s IP/hostname and a shared folder, and act as a print server.
Can you define (more tightly) your goals ? … and how the box will be used ?
Ideally I would like any other devices connected to the network to read from it and (in the case of the xbox and phones) write to it.
Essentially for everything to see it as an accesable hard drive.
OK, I’m a bit lost here … the Xbox can’t write to a NAS drive … at least not across the network.
Sharing files (in it’s simplest form) would/should be as simple as creating a directory to share … sharing the directory with samba … and setting the shared directories permissions to allow everyone read/write access.
Streaming media, could be taken care of with minidlna
If that’s what you want to do … which part do you want help with ? … and which distro/version/desktop are you running … or planning on running.
or is that part of the question … which distro to use ?
There ARE distros whos sole purpose is to turn the box into a NAS (I’ve never tried them though), FreeNAS probably being the most popular:
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/7153/1
But it would be just as easy to use your current distro … which would also allow the box to be used as a desktop PC
Actually … if you want to wait a few days, I’ve just downloaded FreeNAS 8.0.4 and will chuck it on an old box for testing.
Yeh, confusing myself here too.
OK, I'm a bit lost here .. the Xbox can't write to a NAS drive .. at least not across the network.
Lets forget the xbox for now, just assumed it would write to an NAS.
Sharing files (in it's simplest form) would/should be as simple as creating a directory to share .. sharing the directory with samba .. and setting the shared directories permissions to allow everyone read/write access.
Done that and it works fine when using another computer but the tv and xbox don’t see the computer unless I have ushare running.
Streaming media, could be taken care of with minidlna
Turns out I do have minidlna installed and running but although (lets call them ‘the clients’ for now) can see the computer via minidlna they can’t see any files but via ushare they can see the files but not play them.
But it would be just as easy to use your current distro ... which would also allow the box to be used as a desktop PC
Nail on the head there.
I’ve tried transcoding the files to just about every variation I can think of using two septate programs but the problem persists. 90% of the file types play via usb but not via the network.
If it helps I’m running Ubuntu 11.04.
Lets forget the xbox for now, just assumed it would write to an NAS.
Good idea 
… as neither the Xbox (for sure) and the Smart TV (probabaly), can write to anything other than a local (directly attached) USB device.
Done that and it works fine when using another computer but the tv and xbox don't see the computer unless I have ushare running.
Yup … they aren’t designed to, well at least the Xbox isn’t, and I’d assume the TV too … they won’t see your PC’s, or a NAS … ANY NAS (unless it’s running a media streaming server) … but they WILL see locally attached USB devices, and “Streamed” media across a network.
They are not designed to be able to browse a PC’s file system across a network (ANY PC file system) … it either has to be force fed to them by a media streaming server … or they can initialise and read a directly attached USB HDD/Memory stick (as long as it’s formatted correctly).
Turns out I do have minidlna installed and running but although (lets call them 'the clients' for now) can see the computer via minidlna they can't see any files but via ushare they can see the files but not play them.
The films need re-encoding into a format the Xbox/TV and uShare/minidlna “understand” … more on this in a bit.
Nail on the head there. I've tried transcoding the files to just about every variation I can think of using two septate programs but the problem persists. 90% of the file types play via usb but not via the network. If it helps I'm running Ubuntu 11.04.
Use Winff:
sudo apt-get install winff
WinFF settings:-
Convert to: = AVI
Preset: = XviD Widescreen
(or XviD Fullscreen for 4:3)
Test one, by converting about the first minute of the film … then hit Ctrl+C to stop the conversion … then place the .avi output file in the uShare/minidnla shared folder … restart uShare/minidlna so it picks up the added film … check it on your TV/Xbox.
Works fine on my Xboxes 
If minidlna isn’t working … it probably needs some tweaking … let me know if you need/want to do this.
Thanx,
I’ll try that when I get home.
The TV still flags unsupported file type and the xbox says there is a firewall blocking it (with ushare)
With MDLNA they can both see the folder but no files within it.
Ushare config
# /etc/ushare.conf
# Edit this file with 'dpkg-reconfigure ushare'
# Configuration file for uShare
# uShare UPnP Friendly Name (default is 'uShare').
USHARE_NAME=nasd
# Interface to listen to (default is eth0).
# Ex : USHARE_IFACE=eth1
USHARE_IFACE=eth0
# Port to listen to (default is random from IANA Dynamic Ports range)
# Ex : USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_PORT=49153
# Port to listen for Telnet connections
# Ex : USHARE_TELNET_PORT=1337
USHARE_TELNET_PORT=
# Directories to be shared (space or CSV list).
# Ex: USHARE_DIR=/dir1,/dir2
USHARE_DIR=/home/gill/DLNA
# Use to override what happens when iconv fails to parse a file name.
# The default uShare behaviour is to not add the entry in the media list
# This option overrides that behaviour and adds the non-iconv'ed string into
# the media list, with the assumption that the renderer will be able to
# handle it. Devices like Noxon 2 have no problem with strings being passed
# as is. (Umlauts for all!)
#
# Options are TRUE/YES/1 for override and anything else for default behaviour
USHARE_OVERRIDE_ICONV_ERR=
# Enable Web interface (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_WEB=no
# Enable Telnet control interface (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_TELNET=no
# Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_XBOX=no
# Use DLNA profile (yes/no)
# This is needed for PlayStation3 to work (among other devices)
USHARE_ENABLE_DLNA=no
MDLNA config
# port for HTTP (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer) traffic
port=8200
# network interfaces to serve, comma delimited
#network_interface=eth0
# set this to the directory you want scanned.
# * if have multiple directories, you can have multiple media_dir= lines
# * if you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you
# can prepend the type, followed by a comma, to the directory:
# + "A" for audio (eg. media_dir=A,/home/jmaggard/Music)
# + "V" for video (eg. media_dir=V,/home/jmaggard/Videos)
# + "P" for images (eg. media_dir=P,/home/jmaggard/Pictures)
media_dir=/home/gill/DLNA
# set this if you want to customize the name that shows up on your clients
friendly_name=Minidlna
# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its database and album art cache
#db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its log file
#log_dir=/var/log
# this should be a list of file names to check for when searching for album art
# note: names should be delimited with a forward slash ("/")
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
# set this to no to disable inotify monitoring to automatically discover new files
# note: the default is yes
inotify=yes
# set this to yes to enable support for streaming .jpg and .mp3 files to a TiVo supporting HMO
enable_tivo=no
# set this to strictly adhere to DLNA standards.
# * This will allow server-side downscaling of very large JPEG images,
# which may hurt JPEG serving performance on (at least) Sony DLNA products.
strict_dlna=no
# default presentation url is http address on port 80
#presentation_url=http://www.mylan/index.php
# notify interval in seconds. default is 895 seconds.
notify_interval=900
# serial and model number the daemon will report to clients
# in its XML description
serial=12345678
model_number=1
# specify the path to the MiniSSDPd socket
#minissdpdsocket=/var/run/minissdpd.sock
# use different container as root of the tree
# possible values:
# + "." - use standard container (this is the default)
# + "B" - "Browse Directory"
# + "M" - "Music"
# + "V" - "Video"
# + "P" - "Pictures"
# if you specify "B" and client device is audio-only then "Music/Folders" will be used as root
#root_container=.
OK, for uShare, edit the ushare.conf:
sudo gedit /etc/ushare.conf
and change the section:-
Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_XBOX=no
to
Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
USHARE_ENABLE_XBOX=yes
SAVE the file.
restart ushare:
sudo service ushare restart
You might also want to stop minidlna … it may be confusing things:
sudo service minidlna stop
We’ll look at minidlna when I’m at a PC with it installed … though it may not be a good idea for them both to be running anyway.
Made me lol.
Forgot I had set that to no.
Xbox can now see the computer but still can’t play the files even after transcoding.
You’ve had this working before haven’t you ? … with minidlna ?
If so (or even not) how do you fancy ditching uShare, and going with minidlna … this I KNOW works, as I use it.
If this suits, uninstall ushare:
sudo apt-get remove ushare
Now post the contents of:
gedit /etc/default/minidlna
and the output from:
ls -l /var/cache
I’m afk at the moment.
I’ll post the info when I get home.
I don’t mind which software I use so long as it works.
IIRC I did have this all working but only between the desktop and laptop.
# Defaults for minidlna initscript
# sourced by /etc/init.d/minidlna
# installed at /etc/default/minidlna by the maintainer scripts
# These options can be set to modify the behavior of the minidlna init script.
# The options commented out show the default values.
# Start the daemon if set to "yes"
START_DAEMON="yes"
# Path to the configuration file
#CONFIGFILE="/etc/minidlna.conf"
# Path to the log file
LOGFILE="/var/log/minidlna.log"
# User and group the daemon should run as
USER="gill"
GROUP="gill"
# Additional options that are passed to the daemon
DAEMON_OPTS=""
total 68
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2012-06-14 02:17 apt
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2012-06-14 02:18 apt-xapian-index
drwxrwxr-x 3 root lp 4096 2011-03-26 13:16 cups
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-06-15 00:13 debconf
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-10-07 17:17 dictionaries-common
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-06-09 09:36 flashplugin-installer
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-05-20 23:26 fontconfig
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2012-05-20 23:49 gdm
drwxrwsr-t 2 root admin 4096 2011-03-19 22:25 jockey
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2012-06-13 10:45 ldconfig
drwxr-sr-x 54 man root 4096 2012-06-15 00:13 man
drwxr-xr-x 2 gill gill 4096 2012-01-01 15:33 minidlna
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-09-24 12:30 pm-utils
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-02-20 17:56 pppconfig
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2012-06-14 01:08 samba
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2012-03-16 18:34 software-center
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-04-20 03:59 system-tools-backends
OK, I can’t see too much wrong there, so the first thing I want you to do is download a small vovie that I “KNOW” works on my xbox360 with minidlna … link and instructions to follow in a bit, just need to upload it to my dropbox.
I would also like to know if your PC has a static IP … and if so, what the IP is
and confirmation you’ve uninstalled ushare.
OK, I may have worked out what’s going on … I just reinstalled minidlna from the PPA that was in the original tutorail, and it installed a new version in 11.04 that didn’t work.
So we’re going to clear out everything and start from scratch with a new PPA (I’ve tested it as working).
First, download this file for testing:
cd /home/gill/DLNA
then
wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11876059/test.avi
You should now have a 9.3MB file called test.avi in the DLNA folder in your Home folder … this is just for future testing, as I KNOW it works on my setup (ie. just to rule out a transcoding issue).
[EDIT]
now ust to be 100% sure your cuurrent setup is broken, run:
minidlna -R
then
sudo service minidlna restart
Now turn on your Xbox360 (if it’s already on, turn it off/on angain) and see if the test.avi file displays and plays in Videos (on the Xbox360)
If it doesn’t, carry on with the instructions below …
[END EDIT]
OK, lets clear out minidlna and the PPA …
Open a terminal and enter:
sudo software-properties-gtk
When the “Software Sources” window opens … select the “Other Software” tab, and if either of these lines are present:-
http://ppa.launchpad.net/nathan-renniewaldock/ppa/ubuntu natty main
and
http://ppa.launchpad.net/nathan-renniewaldock/ppa/ubuntu natty main (Source Code)
make sure their boxes ARE ticked … click “Close”, and allow it to update.
Now open a terminal and run:
sudo apt-get update
then
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
then
sudo ppa-purge ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/ppa
and let that command complete … may take a minute or three.
When that’s complete, just to be sure run:
sudo apt-get remove minidlna
then
sudo apt-get autoremove
OK, That should have got rid of the old version … now to reinstall
still in the terminal run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stedy6/stedy-minidna
(yes this PPA now contains a version for 11.04)
then
sudo apt-get update
then
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
then
sudo apt-get build-dep minidlna
then
sudo apt-get install minidlna
If it asks you if you want to keep some fies or replace them with the developers version … accept the developers version.
when done, run:
sudo gedit /etc/minidlna.conf
when a file with a ton of stuff in it opens, make it read:-
# port for HTTP (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer) traffic port=48200network interfaces to serve, comma delimited
network_interface=eth0
set this to the directory you want scanned.
* if have multiple directories, you can have multiple media_dir= lines
* if you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you
can prepend the type, followed by a comma, to the directory:
+ “A” for audio (eg. media_dir=A,/home/jmaggard/Music)
+ “V” for video (eg. media_dir=V,/home/jmaggard/Videos)
+ “P” for images (eg. media_dir=P,/home/jmaggard/Pictures)
media_dir=/home/gill/DLNA
set this if you want to customize the name that shows up on your clients
friendly_name=My MiniDLNA Server
set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its database and album art cache
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its log file
log_dir=/var/log
this should be a list of file names to check for when searching for album art
note: names should be delimited with a forward slash (“/”)
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
set this to no to disable inotify monitoring to automatically discover new files
note: the default is yes
inotify=yes
set this to yes to enable support for streaming .jpg and .mp3 files to a TiVo supporting HMO
enable_tivo=no
set this to strictly adhere to DLNA standards.
* This will allow server-side downscaling of very large JPEG images,
which may hurt JPEG serving performance on (at least) Sony DLNA products.
strict_dlna=no
default presentation url is http address on port 80
presentation_url=http://172.16.0.2:48200/
notify interval in seconds. default is 895 seconds.
notify_interval=900
serial and model number the daemon will report to clients
in its XML description
serial=12345678
model_number=1use different container as root of the tree
possible values:
+ “.” - use standard container (this is the default)
+ “B” - “Browse Directory”
+ “M” - “Music”
+ “V” - “Video”
+ “P” - “Pictures”
if you specify “B” and client device is audio-only then “Music/Folders” will be used as root
#root_container=.
(change the bit in red to YOUR PC’s static IP, or comment that line out)
SAVE the file, and close gedit.
Now run:
sudo gedit /etc/default/minidlna
and when a fie with some stuff in it opens, make it read:-
# Defaults for minidlna initscript # sourced by /etc/init.d/minidlna # installed at /etc/default/minidlna by the maintainer scriptsThese options can be set to modify the behavior of the minidlna init script.
The options commented out show the default values.
Start the daemon if set to “yes”
START_DAEMON=“yes”
Path to the configuration file
CONFIGFILE=“/etc/minidlna.conf”
Path to the log file
#LOGFILE=“/var/lib/minidlna/log/minidlna.log”
User and group the daemon should run as
USER=“gill”
GROUP=“gill”Additional options that are passed to the daemon
#DAEMON_OPTS=“”
SAVE the file, and exit gedit.
Now run:
sudo chown -R gill:gill /var/cache/minidlna
then
minidlna -R
then
sudo service minidlna restart
Now turn on your Xbox360 (if it’s already on, turn it off/on angain) … and go to Video’s and see if there’s a server called “My MiniDLNA Server”, that contains a video called test.avi thata plays.
Yes I have removed ushare.
Don’t think the ip is static but we can make it so if it will help(commented out the line btw)
Hmmm.
The xbox can see minidlna but still says no videos found.
Odd … did you do ALL of the above ?
resend the contents of:
gedit /etc/minidlna.conf
and
gedit /etc/default/minidlna
and the output from:
ls -l /home/gill
and
ls /home/gill/DLNA
and
ls -l /var/cache
and
sudo service minidlna restart
and
ps aux | grep minidlna
and
service minidlna status
and
minidlna -V