Hi All,
My name is Georges. 24. a French guy interested in RasPi

I have seen several tutorials about minidlna server but, there was always something missing, so I want to share with you.

The idea is to use the RasPi as a multimedia server (in my case, for my PS3).

Hardware/Network configuration :
RasPi (I an under raspian, I use 2012-08-16-wheezy-raspbian)
External HD, or USB device, where media files are stored. Plug it to RasPi (USB)
PS3 (or any mediacenter to discover to RasPi media files)
(PC, ) RasPi and PS3 under to same sub-network

As I only have 1 screen for PS3 and RasPi, I did the configuration using ssh

• Assuming IP adress table is :
  PC : 192.168.0.11
  PS3 : 192.168.0.14
  RasPi : 192.168.0.16

In case of using ssh, Connect :

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Enter password (default "raspberry"), then tty command line appears

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I recommend updating everything before intallation :
Update package list:

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Update packages:

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Mount hard drive automatically :
Use this command to discover UUID :

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You see your drive suck as :

/dev/sda1: LABEL="ExternalHD" UUID="49A1-143B" TYPE="vfat"

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Make a directory where to mount the disk and change the autorizations:

sudo mkdir -p /media/HardDrive
sudo chmod 755 /media/HardDrive

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Edit the fstab file :

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Add this line (using your UUID and TYPE) :

UUID=49A1-143B  /media/HardDrive   vfat    defaults      0     0

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Install minidlna :

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It will warn you about how many disk space it will use and dependencies installation

Now you can configure minidlna:

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You see many options like :

# Change the Media Dir's to point to the external hard drive, obviously change these to match your directory layout
media_dir=A,/media/HardDrive/Media/Music
media_dir=V,/media/HardDrive/Media/Video
media_dir=P,/media/HardDrive/Media/Photos
 
# Change db_dir so that the database is saved across reboots
db_dir=/home/pi/.minidlna
 
# Uncomment log_dir for now in case we hit problems
log_dir=/var/log

You can choose to start minidlna at boot :

sudo update-rc.d minidlna defaults

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Or just start it once now :

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MiniDLNA will now begin indexing all of your media files, it's quite quick but folders not COMPLETELY indexed will not appear until they are done.

If you modify minidlna configuration, you have to reload it :

sudo service minidlna force-reload

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You PS3 detects automatically the server in sections Pictures, Music or Videos
Usage is absolutely fluid. Play and pause a DivX without any problem. Thumbnail using square button is quick/instant !!

I forgot something ? I am not crystal clear ? Some spelling mistakes ? Leave a comment !