Mediatomb Server on Fedora 20 x64

Originally posted in November 2014

Mediatomb is an opensource (GPL) UPnP mediaserver with a nice web user interface, allowing you to stream your digital media via your home network and listen or watch it on a variety of UPnP compatible devices simultaneously. Particularly, it can be configured as a DLNA server to stream your media to your Smart TVs or DLNA enabled devices such as ipod docks with the Auris Skye adapter.

Note the output indicating that the YouTube feature is enabled; this seems to be the default message, despite the feature being actually disabled. I decline to confirm or deny whether the feature actually works. The message says it all!

The convention used for issuing commands in the terminal are if you are supposed to run via root user the line starts with "#" and if you are to run the command as user the line starts with "$".

Installation & Configuration of Mediatomb

Binaries for Fedora 20 x64 are available from the Fedora repositories, so you can install Mediatomb using yum with the following command.

#yum install mediatomb

There are basically two ways of running Mediatomb: you can either start it directly as a user or run it as a daemon.

To run it as a normal user run $mediatomb

To run it as a daemon #service mediatomb start

The configuration file is stored in two places: if you run as root user it is /etc/mediatomb/config.xml or as normal user in ~/.mediatomb/config.xml. This is very important because depending on whether you run Mediatomb as a root user or normal user, you will have to edit the relevant configuration file. Otherwise, changes to the config.xml file will not be applied. The configuration file for the server itself is /etc/mediatomb.conf

Running Mediatomb in Fedora 20 x64

At the time of writing, Mediatomb is never able to stream media out of the box. I identified the following issues in the configuration itself.

• The network interface that the server will stream on is not set. This is set in /etc/mediatomb.conf
• Mediatomb is configured to create/write iptable rules itself. However, in the newest Fedora distros, a firewall application called firewalld is the only application allowed to create/write iptable rules. In other words, Mediatomb is effectively blocked by the firewall by default.
• Even if the firewall is unblocked for the Mediatomb server's ports, because the ports that the server binds to are set to be dynamic the server will fail to stream intermittently. 
• Mediatomb will not work as a DLNA server out of the box. You will have to write the relevant header files to the config.xml file. 
• Mediatomb is unable to play certain files like matroska (mkv) too, unless you enable transcoding manually in the config.xml file.

In this article, I will cover the first 4 points in full, and partially the last point. Indeed, making Mediatomb stream many formats efficiently is a large subject; you may look into other places such as here

Importantly, we will run the server in normal user mode rather than as root user. Thereby, we will configure the local user config file (~/.mediatomb.conf). We will also modify the server configuration file to provide the network interface.

Make sure all instances of Mediatomb are not running. You may use the killall command.

Run the following command to find all the network interfaces your computer operates on.

#ifconfig

In the listed interfaces, generally eth0 is the wired interface, wlan0 is the wireless interface and lo is the loopback interface. The names mentioned above may differ, but I've noticed that at least the first letter is common. Check the TX and RX packet data in the output to verify if the interface is active. Otherwise, you can go ahead by using the loopback interface for a start.

Now you need to edit the mediatomb.conf file. My favourite editor is vi but if you are not familiar with it you may also use something like gedit too.

#gedit /etc/mediatomb.conf

Change the line which reads MT_INTERFACE="" to MT_INTERFACE="lo" (the network interface your computer operates). Save and close.

Exit root user mode. Now the local user config file must be edited. First, we will make the port that Mediatomb binds itself to be static rather than be dynamic. The server by default binds to port 49152, so we will use this port permanently.

$gedit ~/.mediatomb/config.xml

You have to modify certain header lines. First, set the port to 49152.

<port>49152</port>

Then add the following lines between the custom-http-headers to stream Mediatomb as a DLNA server. 

<custom-http-headers>

<add header="transferMode.dlna.org: Streaming"/>

<add header="contentFeatures.dlna.org:DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=017000 00000000000000000000000000"/>

</custom-http-headers>

Enable transcoding

<transcoding enabled="yes">

Now, we have to modify the line indicating the transcoding profile vlcmpeg. I had to modify the lines highlighted to get it work; check yours and alter accordingly. You may also add more profiles if you wish too.

<profile name="vlcmpeg" enabled="yes" type="external">

        <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype>

        <accept-url>yes</accept-url>

        <first-resource>yes</first-resource>

        <accept-ogg-theora>yes</accept-ogg-theora>

        <agent command="vlc" arguments="-I dummy %in --sout #transcode{venc=ffmpeg,vcodec=mp1v,vb=4096,fps=25,aenc=ffmpeg,acodec=mpga,ab=192,samplerate=44100,channels=2}:standard{access=file,mux=ps,dst=%out} vlc:quit"/>

Save and close.

Now go back into root user mode. We will allow the relevant ports through the firewall. Port 49152 (tcp) is the one the server binds to; port 1900 (udp) is the general port DLNA servers bind to.

#firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=49152/tcp

#firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=1900/udp

Exit root user mode. Run mediatomb as normal user.