TomatoUSB

Just a quick note about DLNA. I have tested it and it worked wonderfully for me. I just activated it and waited some time for all files to be indexed. With a modern Android mobile phone (with DLNA support) I was able to play videos in many format (included HD MKV videos, of course downscaled to the resolution of the phone display, but it does not matter).

I started with the DB in RAM and then changed it to the custom path (I put it in /opt/var/run). I saw from the config files that MiniDLNA is using inotify to be notified of new files, which is great.

All in all, I'm surprised that it was such a flawless experience. Thank you very much, TeddyB!

it seems like this does work, however i may just be a n00b at this, but i've got a usb hdd hooked up, a couple folders with tv episodes/movies in them, but when i browse the folders from an xbox or ps3, it doesn't show any files? do i need to change the mount point to something else or am i missing a step somewhere?

Nevermind.. i was having one of those moments.. got it sorted out.

I started with the DB in RAM and then changed it to the custom path (I put it in /opt/var/run).

Did you mean /tmp/var/run?

Also is there an advantage to this? Speed?

Or did you just want to be able to have it scan on startup?

I'm having crashing problems with this.

I figured I'd experiment with a USB thumbdrive before trying to attach it to a larger music collection, but even with only ~3gb of music it seems to have a few hiccups. I did have success seeing the catalog (during indexing) from an Xbox360, but it crashed the router when I tried to start playing a track.

I'm not sure if this is due to extended characters in many of my filenames? I would hope that MiniDLNA uses UTF8 for filename and tag parsing, but you never know.

Does anyone know what the footprint of the database is like? I tried both RAM and JFFS and had trouble both ways… I'll give the custom path method a try next.

Depends on what router you have—how much RAM & flash. These things don't have much excess horsepower available. I have an ASUS WL-520GU. I can run transmission for torrents, but it usually crashes or locks up the router within a few hours. I've been able to grab frames from a webcam, but that too crashes in under a minute.

I have been to plug in a USB sound adapter run mpd to play streaming internet music, and that works okay.

You do have a swapfile/partition activated, don't you?

I'm using an Asus RT-N16, so it should have plenty of overhead with 128mb ram. Initially I didn't have any swapfile set up, figuring it would have plenty of room in ~100mb of free ram, and then when that crashed immediately I tried it with JFFS turned on. Next attempt will be with a directly defined cache location on the external drive.

In other news… I installed minidlna on an Ubuntu desktop I have here and it seems to work fine. I'll use its behavior on the desktop as a reference and try to troubleshoot the TomatoUSB version from the command line via ssh.

Since there's not a command reference that I've found, here are a few useful bits of info for anyone that needs to experiment with minidlna from the command line:

is there supposed to be a native webif with minidlna?

and what is the "presentation" webif/address/port?

I agree - documentation is scant and not seeming available in an single authoritative source… ?

Does the Ubuntu package come w/ a man page?

I've tried it as well … from my RT-N16 (with Ext build installed) and accessed it via both VLC (a recent version w/ the reworked UPnP client) and XBMC, both on my atom-based AirMini10v (running OS X Leopard 10.5.8)… and I was very pleased w/ the results. I tried both audio and video files.

I haven't tried it w/ a really big media library. (this seemed to be a limiting factor w/ both mt-daapd and MediaTomb - you hit a wall w/ most low-power NAS devices when you get to around 7000 - 10000 songs/mp3s).

It would be nice if the webif USB & NAS:Media Server had a text window/option to set a different location for the database (though TBH I'm not certain that it doesn't start from scratch everytime - it would only be useful if it would save startup time or rescan time).

There is not an official package for Ubuntu, and the user-created package in the PPA at https://launchpad.net/~stedy6/+archive/stedy-minidna doesn't have a man page.

Minidlna doesn't have a web interface of any kind, just the protocol itself at the configured port. There is a web admin interface that you can use, created by the same user that did the packaging in the PPA I linked above. MiniDLNA Webmin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlnawebmin/ It requires already having a webserver running on the box and configured with CGI support, though.

None of this is really helpful for TomatoUSB users.

I'm getting partial success with MiniDLNA. Music and Pictures are mostly working fine (streaming works but cover images for music albums are not showing). However, Movies are not working at all. I'm unable to see the video library through Xbox, Windows Media player on my PC, or from a Patriot Box Office media player. (I have a Netgear WNR3500L)

You can find the config for MiniDLNA under /etc/minidlna.config - However, that config file has been trimmed a lot and all comments removed. If you download the source from here you'll find a fully documented config file that explains more about the options.

Also, the database file is a standard SQLite database file that you can open and browse using SQLite Browser - I initially thought that the database was not being built correctly which was preventing my videos from showing up. So I started looking through the source code and database file, but I didn't find anything helpful. I did realize though that building the database is time consuming and can take up to 10-15 mins if you have a lot of files that need to be cataloged.

thanks @ Zlord

I downloaded the source and will take a peek.

In terms of what I've experienced, on my RT-N16 I have it set up to serve a few .mp4 videos so that my son can watch some TV shows (recorded and converted w/ eyeTV on our HTMac). I moved the database from /jffs to /mnt (the USB hdd). Under use by just one client, the CPU usage is under 5%.

I will try loading it w/ 5-10GB w/ several 100 mp3s & mp4s, and see how it likes that.