minidlna.conf(5)

🎀 minidlna.conf(5) 🎀

hiii bestie, welcome to the minidlna.conf(5) manual page (yes, that's the File Formats Manual section, we're fancy here) ✨ this is the group chat briefing on how to configure your DLNA server, and honestly? it's giving main character energy.

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💖 NAME 💖

minidlna — the config file situation for your very own media server 🍓

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so minidlna is a light weight but very functional DLNA server. no cap. and here's the slay part: in most cases, the defaults do not need modifications — she just works 💅

the global configuration file lives at /etc/minidlna.conf, but lowkey if you're a local user without system root access, you can still run minidlna with your own configuration file. icon behavior 🫶

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🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

these are the user configurable options in /etc/minidlna.conf. heads up though — minidlna runs by default as user nobody, so make sure your system permissions are set correctly: read access to media, and write access to the cache and log dirs. do not skip this, fr fr 😭

• friendly_name — the name you want your media server to be seen as. EG:

friendly_name=Home Media Server

• port — port for HTTP (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer) traffic etc, defaults to 8200. there should be no need to change this tbh.
• network_interface — network interfaces to serve, comma delimited. maximum is 8 interfaces. defaults to all.
• strict_dlna — 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. so like, tradeoffs 💀
• notify_interval — notify interval in seconds. the default is 895 seconds.
• minissdpdsocket — specify the path to the MiniSSDPd socket, EG:

minissdpdsocket=/var/run/minissdpd.sock

• serial — serial number the daemon will report to clients in its XML description. defaults to 12345678
• model — model number the daemon will report to clients in its XML description. defaults to 1
• media_dir — path to the directory containing the media files minidlna should share. use this option multiple times if you have more than one directory to share 🦋

Example:

media_dir=/opt/multimedia/videos
media_dir=/opt/multimedia/movies

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🌈 restricting a media_dir to a specific media type 🌈

you can also restrict an entry to a specific media type — you do this by using the following syntax: the letter 'A', 'V' or 'P', followed by a comma (,), followed by the path. the meaning of that first letter is as follows:

• 'A' for audio files
• 'V' for video files
• 'P' for image files

for example, if you want to include only video files located in /opt/multimedia/videos directory, and only music in /opt/multimedia/music, then you would use:

media_dir=V,/opt/multimedia/videos
media_dir=A,/opt/multimedia/music

another example would be:

media_dir=V,/opt/multimedia/videos
media_dir=V,/opt/multimedia/movies
media_dir=A,/opt/multimedia/music

or, if you did not care what type it finds, then you could use:

media_dir=/opt/multimedia/videos
media_dir=/opt/multimedia/movies
media_dir=/opt/multimedia/music

and yes you can mix it up — find anything in music, but only Videos, in videos and movies:

media_dir=V,/opt/multimedia/videos
media_dir=V,/opt/multimedia/movies
media_dir=/opt/multimedia/music

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💜 the rest of the options 💜

• presentation_url — default presentation url is http address on port 80. EG:

presentation_url=http://www.mediaserver.lan/index.php

• db_dir — where minidlna stores the data files, including Album cache files. by default this is /var/cache/minidlna
• log_dir — path to the directory where the log file upnp-av.log should be stored, this defaults to /var/log
• log_level — set this to change the verbosity of the information that is logged. each section can use a different level: off, fatal, error, warn, info, or debug

Example:

log_level=general,artwork,database,inotify,scanner,metadata,http,ssdp,tivo=warn

• inotify — set to 'yes' to enable inotify monitoring of the files under media_dir to automatically discover new files. set to 'no' to disable inotify.
• album_art_names — this should be a list of file names to check for when searching for album art, and names should be delimited with a forward slash (/).

Example:

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

• enable_tivo — set this to yes to enable support for streaming .jpg and .mp3 files to a TiVo supporting HMO, default is no.
• tivo_discovery — set this to 'beacon' to use the legacy TiVo broadcast discovery method. defaults to using Bonjour if Avahi support is available.
• root_container — use a different container as the root of the tree exposed to clients. the possible values are:
  • '.' to use the standard container (this is the default)
  • 'B' to use the "Browse Directory" container;
  • 'M' to use the "Music" container;
  • 'V' to use the "Video" container;
  • 'P' to use the "Pictures" container.

if you specify 'B' and the client device is audio only, then "Music/Folders" will be used as root container and you wont see Videos. 🙈

• force_sort_criteria — always force SortCriteria to this value, regardless of the SortCriteria passed by the client. you may prepend the sort criteria with "!" to alter the titles of the objects so that they will be alphanumerically sorted in the order you specify here, to work around clients that do their own alphanumeric sorting.

Example:

force_sort_criteria=+upnp:class,+upnp:originalTrackNumber,+dc:title

• wide_links — set to 'yes' to allow symlinks that point outside user-defined media_dirs. by default, wide symlinks are not followed.
• enable_subtitles — set to 'no' to disable subtitle support on unknown clients. by default, subtitles are enabled for unknown or generic clients.

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👑 VERSION 👑

this manpage corresponds to minidlna version 1.3.0 — periodt.

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🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

minidlna developed by Justin Maggard — https://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/

man page written by Noel Butler <noelb@ausics.net>

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⭐ LICENSE ⭐

GPL — that's the whole section, she's concise 💅

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/minidlna.conf

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• minidlna(8)

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you're officially minidlna-conf-literate 🌟 muah 💖

written up in October 2012 for the minidlna.conf(5) page in the File Formats Manual — go forth and configure, you gorgeous nerd 🎀✨