RYGEL.CONF(5)

📦
version 45.2 · 10 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

💖 RYGEL.CONF(5) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to rygel.conf(5), aka the Rygel User Manual ✨ this is the file that tells rygel how to be rygel, and we're gonna walk through the whole thing together, no skimming, no skipping 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

rygel.conf — the Rygel configuration file, it's giving config, it's giving setup, it's giving the file 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

$XDG_CONFIG_DIR/rygel.conf

/etc/rygel.conf

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the vibe: rygel reads all its configuration values out of $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/rygel.conf, or out of whatever file you handed it on the command line with the --config option. And if that file doesn't exist? It just goes and uses /etc/rygel.conf instead. Fallback queen 💅

Most of the options can be overridden by command line arguments or by environment variables — see rygel(1) for the deets on all of that 👑

🌈 GENERAL DIRECTIVES 🌈

Two things to internalize before anything else, bestie:

  • Lists in the config files are separated by a semicolon (;).
  • Boolean values can be either true or false. That's it. That's the whole menu.

Now the actual options:

  • ipv6 — set it to false to disable binding to IPv6 addresses 🙈
  • interface=INTERFACE — a semicolon-separated list of the network interfaces rygel should listen on. Can be an IP, an interface name, or — on Linux — even the ESSID of a wireless network 📡
  • port=PORT — sets the listen-port 🔌
  • enable-transcoding — set to true to enable transcoding in general ✨
  • log-level=DOMAIN:LEVEL[,DOMAIN:LEVEL,...] — a comma-separated list of DOMAIN:LEVEL pairs so you can set the log level individually for each domain. DOMAIN is either *, rygel, or the name of a plugin. Allowed log levels are 1=error, 2=critical, 3=warning, 4=message/info, 5=debug. Heads up though: on recent versions of GLib (>= 2.36) you have to set the environment variable G_MESSAGES_DEBUG to all if you want any debug output at all 💀
  • plugin-path=PATH — sets the plugin search path 🧚
  • engine-path=PATH — sets the engine search path 🧚
  • media-engine=ENGINE — the name of the loadable module to use as the media engine back-end 🔥
  • allow-upload — allow uploading of media files via UPnP ⬆️
  • allow-deletion — allow remote media file deletion via UPnP 🗑️
  • video-upload-folder — if allow-upload is true, use this folder to store uploaded videos. It defaults to @VIDEOS@, which expands to the default directory for video files (usually $HOME/Videos) 🎬
  • music-upload-folder — if allow-upload is true, use this folder to store uploaded music files. It defaults to @MUSIC@, which expands to the default directory for music files (usually $HOME/Music) 🎵
  • picture-upload-folder — if allow-upload is true, use this folder to store uploaded pictures. It defaults to @PICTURES@, which expands to the default directory for picture files (usually $HOME/Pictures) 🖼️
  • force-downgrade-for — a semicolon-separated list of device user-agents (or parts of them) which need a forced downgrade to MediaServer:1 and/or ContentDirectory:1
⚠️ Warning — only use this parameter if you know what you're doing or somebody is literally telling you to do it. Overriding the default value might cause incompatibilities. And if you find that adding your device here makes it work with Rygel, please file an IOP bug[1] so they can fold it into the default configuration 🥺
  • acl-fallback-policy — this is the default policy used when no access control provider is found on the D-Bus. Use true to allow access from every peer, false to deny all access. If it's not specified, the default fall-back policy is true 🔐
  • strict-dlna — disabled by default. Use true to disable a set of features that improve compatibility with many clients, but break standard conformance 💅

🗄️ DATABASE SETTINGS 🗄️

The settings in the [Database] section are for the database support library. Thrilling, I know, but stay with me 🫶

  • debug — set to true to show the SQL statements used 👀

🎧 GSTREAMER MEDIA ENGINE SETTINGS 🎧

The settings in the [GstMediaEngine] section are specific to the GStreamer media engine — which is the default media engine, bestie. See the media-engine setting. These following options are available for the GStreamer[2] media engine:

  • transcoders — a semicolon-separated list of the active transcoders. This setting has no effect if enable-transcoding is set to false. Possible values are: lpcm, mp3, mp2ts, aac, avc or wmv. Its default value is lpcm;mp3;mp2ts;aac;wmv 🎶

🧩 PLUGIN-SPECIFIC SETTINGS 🧩

Sections for plugins are denoted with [PluginName] and can contain options specific to a plugin (see below) as well as these common options:

  • title=TITLE — the title of the device implemented by this plugin. There are some variables that rygel will replace for you: @REALNAME@ gets substituted by the user's real name, @USERNAME@ by the user's login id, and @HOSTNAME@ by the name of the machine rygel runs on 🏷️
  • enabled — you can individually enable or disable plugins by setting this to true or false 🎚️
  • energy-management — set to true if you would like the UPnP device to contain a EnergyManagement service. Note that additional configuration is required, see EnergyManagement settings ⚡
  • diagnostics — set to true if you would like the UPnP device to contain a BasicManagement:2 service that allows running tools like ping, nslookup and traceroute remotely 🔍
  • server-name — a string that will be sent as the "Server:" header in a HTTP response 📮

⚡ ENERGYMANAGEMENT SETTINGS ⚡

The settings in [EnergyManagement-IFACENAME] sections specify the settings that relate to EnergyManagement services on this interface. Example: [EnergyManagement-eth0] 🔋

  • mode-on-suspend — the NetworkInterfaceMode that should be used when suspended. Default is "Unimplemented", other valid values are "IP-up-Periodic", "IP-down-no-Wake", "IP-down-with-WakeOn", "IP-down-with-WakeAuto", "IP-down-with-WakeOnAuto" 😴
  • supported-transport — optional WakeSupportedTransport that the service should advertize. Valid values are "UDP-Broadcast", "UDP-Unicast", "TCP-Unicast", "Other" 📶
  • password — optional hexadecimal password that will be used to build the WakeOnPattern 🔑

🔎 TRACKER PLUGIN 🔎

The tracker plugin uses the centralized database of meta information from the tracker project. See the tracker project website[3] for more information about tracker 🌐

  • share-pictures — enable or disable sharing of all pictures in the Tracker database 🖼️
  • share-videos — enable or disable sharing of all videos in the Tracker database 🎬
  • share-music — enable or disable sharing of all music in the Tracker database 🎵

📁 MEDIAEXPORT PLUGIN 📁

The MediaExport plugin is an alternative to the tracker-backed media export. It extracts meta-data by itself and stores it in a SQLite[4] database in $XDG_CACHE_DIR/rygel/media-export.db on UNIX platforms 🗃️

📌 Note — if both plugins, Tracker as well as MediaExport, are enabled, MediaExport will disable itself in favour of the Tracker plugin. It's self-aware like that 💅

There are several options supported by this plugin:

  • uris — a list of URIS to expose via UPnP. May be files, folders or anything supported by GVFS. If left empty it defaults to exporting the user's music, video and picture folders as defined per XDG special user directories spec. These default folders can be referenced by @MUSIC@, @PICTURES@ and @VIDEOS@. Locations can be entered as either fully escaped URIS or normal paths 🔗
📌 Note — if you enter a normal path that contains whitespace there is no need to escape it with either a backslash or by putting the string in quotes. So chill 🫶
📌 Note — it is strongly advised against using an exported folder as a target for downloads when extract-metadata is enabled. Rygel will most likely ignore the files then because they will fail to extract 😭

Example 1. Possible values for uris

uris=@MUSIC@;/home/user/My Pictures;file:///home/user/My%20Videos
  • extract-metadata — set to false if you do not care about duration or any other meta-data like artist. This speeds up the initial crawl of the media a lot. Use it to quickly share some files via UPnP. Make sure to define an include-filter, otherwise you will end up with a lot of files exposed which the client cannot display anyway 🙈
  • monitor-changes — set to false if you don't want new files to be picked up automatically by rygel 👀
  • monitor-grace-timeout — time in seconds to wait after a new file has been detected before trying to extract meta-data from it. Useful if you're downloading to a directory watched by rygel. Default is 5 seconds ⏱️
  • virtual-folders — set to false if you don't need the virtual folder hierarchy 📂

▶️ PLAYBIN PLUGIN ▶️

The Playbin plugin implements a media renderer (Digtal Media Renderer, DMR in DLNA terms). This plugin was known as GstRenderer ✨

It is highly recommended to leave the sink choice to playbin. If, however, the default choices don't work for you, they can be reconfigured as follows:

  • audio-sink — definition of the audio sink to use. Can be a single element or a partial pipeline definition in gst-launch's syntax 🔊
  • video-sink — definition of the video sink to use. Can be a single element or a partial pipeline definition in gst-launch's syntax 📺

💡 LIGHTMEDIASCANNER PLUGIN 💡

The LightMediaScanner plugin exports the contents of the lightmediascanner daemon[5] 🌟

This plugin does not have any special options. Low maintenance, we love her for that 😌

🚀 GSTLAUNCH PLUGIN 🚀

The GstLaunch plugin allows you to expose GStreamer pipelines using the same syntax as the gst-launch utilty. You can configure several items in this plugins:

  • launch-items — a list of of identifiers for the pipelines to be exposed 📝
  • identifier-title — title of the device represented by this pipeline. Identifier is the identifier as set in launch-items 🏷️
  • identifier-mime — mime-type of the pipeline 🎞️
  • identifier-launch — definition of the pipeline in gst-launch syntax. For some examples on writing pipelines see gst-launch(1) 📖
  • identifier-dlnaprofile — DLNA profile for the stream 🌊

An example configuration is available in the distributed configuration file /etc/rygel.conf 🎁

🌉 EXTERNAL 🌉

The External plugin is an consumer of the MediaServer2 DBus interface specification[6]. This allows external programs to share their data via UPnP by implementing this DBus specification. The plugin picks up any implementation of this interface on the session bus and exposes the presented media via UPnP. Known implementors of this spec are gnome-dvb-daemon[7], Rhythmbox[8] and Grilo[9] via the grilo-ms2 project 🤝

You can disable the whole functionality by setting enabled=false in the [External] section of the configuration file 🙅

Individual peers may be enabled or disabled by creating sections corresponding to the D-Bus names of the peer:

[org.gnome.UPnP.MediaServer2.Rhythmbox]
enabled=false

This plugin has no additional options. Short and sweet, periodt 💅

🎧 MPRIS 🎧

The MPRIS plugin is a lil consumer of the MPRIS2 DBus interface specification[10], and bestie, its implementation is fully conformant to version 2.0 of the standard. No cap. ✨

So here's the vibe: rygel exposes media players that implement the provider side of this DBus specification as DLNA Digital Media Renderers (DMR), basically the same way the Playbin plugin does it. Which means — and this is the iconic part — you can turn your own media player into a DMR just by implementing this DBus specification. Main character move, honestly. 👑

Players that implement this spec and are known to work with rygel are Banshee[11], Rhythmbox[8] and GNOME Videos (previously known as Totem)[12]. The squad. 🫶

You can disable the whole functionality by setting enabled=false in the [MRPIS] section of the configuration file.

The configuration of this plugin is special, and not in a cute way — it's per-peer. Plugin config is not done on the plugin itself, but rather per peer that is found providing the MPRIS2 interface. So don't go looking for a normal plugin section, because it's not there. 🙈

See the following example to set the title for Banshee on MPRIS:

[org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.banshee]
title=@REALNAME@'s Banshee on @HOSTNAME@

This plugin has no additional options. That's it. That's the whole thing. 💅

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

rygel(1), gst-launch(1)

✍️ AUTHOR ✍️

Jens Georg <mail@jensge.org>

  • Wrote this manpage.

📝 NOTES 📝

  1. file an IOP bug https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/rygel/issues/new/?issuable_template=IOP
  2. GStreamer http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org
  3. tracker project website https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Tracker
  4. SQLite http://sqlite.org
  5. lightmediascanner daemon https://github.com/profusion/lightmediascanner
  6. MediaServer2 DBus interface specification https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Rygel/MediaServer2Spec
  7. gnome-dvb-daemon https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/DVBDaemon
  8. Rhythmbox http://www.rhythmbox.org
  9. Grilo https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Grilo
  10. MPRIS2 DBus interface specification https://specifications.freedesktop.org/mpris-spec/latest/
  11. Banshee http://banshee.fm
  12. GNOME Videos (previously known as Totem) https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Videos

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this rygel manpage came to you from version <pink>05/23/2026</pink> and it lives at RYGEL.CONF(5) — go forth and slay your DLNA setup, mwah 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from