MediaTomb and PS3: The Lazy Man's solution

2011-04-10 00:45:20 INFO: Loading configuration from: /etc/mediatomb/config.xml
2011-04-10 00:45:20 INFO: Checking configuration...
2011-04-10 00:45:20 ERROR: Config version "2" does not yet exist!

I can not start mediatomb.
Please help.

I just installed mediatomb to use with my iphone. I got it setup and am able to play audio file using iphone app call plugplayer.

I am trying to play video files now. I edit the config.xml script with yours. No errors upon starting the deamon. However, when I click on a video file, it doesn't play. I've checked to see if there are any errors in mediatomb.log and mediatomb-transcode.log. There are none.

I noticed the last section of the howto says that we need mencoder, ffmpeg, mediainfo and lsdvd. We get them all using 'apt-get' for ubuntu users? Do we need to configure any of the files after the install?

I am using fedora 14 and I tried implementing your scripts and when I go to restart the service it fails with the following error message:

Applying multicast settings to eth0... Starting mediatomb: [FAILED]

I wanted to see why it failed so I ran the following

# echo $?

and it came back with

1

So I checked the initscript:

#!/bin/sh
#
# mediatomb This script starts and stops the mediatomb daemon
#
# chkconfig: - 95 30
# processname: mediatomb
# description: mediatomb is a daemon process which provides a UPnP service
# config: /etc/mediatomb
# config: /etc/mediatomb/config.xml
# pidfile: /var/run/mediatomb.pid

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network

# Check that networking is up.
[ ${NETWORKING} = "no" ] && exit 0

# Set default mediatomb configuration.

# either make an installation in /etc/mediatomb and leave this blank,
# or specify an alternative config file location using the -c option
# Note: be aware, that -i parameter is used to set the ip of the
# interface specified above

. /etc/mediatomb.conf

###############################
# make sure to run it as nobody
MEDIATOMB="-d -u $MT_USER -g $MT_GROUP -P $MT_PIDFILE -l $MT_LOGFILE -m $MT_HOME -f $MT_CFGDIR -p $MT_PORT"

[ -f /usr/bin/mediatomb ] || exit 0
[ ${MT_INTERFACE} = "NOT_SET" ] && echo "Please edit /etc/mediatomb.conf and change \
the MT_INTERFACE variable to your network device (eth0, eth1, etc.)" && exit 0

PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

# By default it's all good
RETVAL=0

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
# Start daemon.
echo -n "Applying multicast settings to $MT_INTERFACE... "
# those settings are necessary for us to react to M-SEARCH requests
route add -net 239.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 $MT_INTERFACE >/dev/null 2>&1
ifconfig $MT_INTERFACE allmulti
touch $MT_PIDFILE
chown mediatomb $MT_PIDFILE

mkdir -p "/$MT_HOME/$MT_CFGDIR"
chown mediatomb "/$MT_HOME/$MT_CFGDIR"

echo -n "Starting mediatomb: "

daemon $NICELEVEL mediatomb $MEDIATOMB -e $MT_INTERFACE $MT_OPTIONS

RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/mediatomb
;;
stop)
# Stop daemons.
echo -n "Shutting down mediatomb: "
killproc mediatomb
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/mediatomb
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
condrestart)
[ -e /var/lock/subsys/mediatomb ] && $0 restart
;;
status)
status mediatomb
RETVAL=$?
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status|condrestart}"
RETVAL=1
;;
esac

exit $RETVAL

when I replace your xml file with the default its starts fine. What am I missing?

Couldn´t start the web interface running Ubuntu 10.10. Noted a difference between original config.xml and the one used here:

Original:

/var/lib/mediatomb

The one used here:

/etc/mediatomb

When I changed, I am able to access the web-i/f.

/Uffe

Thank you very much for the script. I'm using the improved one and it works great; it saved me a lot of time.

I'm not trying to be the grammar police or anything but "neglectable" isn't a word. I think you mean "negligible".

Thanks again for your hard work.

Your posts on Mediatomb tweaks are always nice! Good job.

I'm having a problem with a couple of avi movies streaming to my PS3 where I get no sound output even though its a mp3 track. I tried running your script to transcode it, but for some reason it didn't work on my PS3 (corrupted data error). In these cases, is it possibçe/viable to just work on the audio track of the video or it's just easier to re-code the file "offline"?

I also tried running it with a MKV blu-ray rip but my processor (Intel Dual Core e3300) couldn't take the load and the video was crippled and freezing every 3 seconds or so. Do you think that could be solved by tweaking the buffer config on mencoder?

Thanks once again :)

I also am using Ubuntu 10.04 (UbuntuStudio).
But the config.xml as version 2 specified which is not found on the mediatomb web site.
So when starting the daemon, it fails with a version "2" not found...

Changed version 2 to 1 (and other changes mentioned above), daemon starts fine but the transcode script never got executed (even if it's located in good directory and execute bit is set for all on the script).

Also changed home directory to /var/lib/mediatomb according to ubuntu's config.xml in package.

mediatomb installed is maintained by ubuntu community which is version 0.12.0.

There is an error in config.xml
Line
/usr/share/mediatomb/import.js
should be
/usr/share/mediatomb/js/import.js
rodrigo

Hey,

i recently tried your script - and it works amazingly. Thanks for the effort you put in it.
Put, i cant pause any video file that plays on my ps3 - i think its because of the on-the-fly transcoding, or is there a chance that i maybe did something wrong?

mfg
OliA

Thanks for writing this up! Transcoding everything is a fantastic way to make using mediatomb easier. I am still in the process of testing it but when I was reading over your mediatomb configuration file I noticed that the mappings section is repeated an additional time so it actually appears twice. It actually might make things easier, for some people, if you posted the configuration file as a diff.

Thanks for the config. It helped, I'll admit I'm too lazy and didn't really want to read the Mediatomb help pages to try and figure out the transcoding bit. Unfortunately, I found that some of my hi quality videos (with 5.1 channel audio) are being transcoded to a lower quality 2.1 channel video. I still use the config though, only for mp4s, mkvs and iso's. Thanks again!

I am using version 0.12.0 on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx x86 and I get the following:
2010-06-14 22:34:50 INFO: Checking configuration...
2010-06-14 22:34:50 INFO: Setting filesystem import charset to UTF-8
2010-06-14 22:34:50 INFO: Setting metadata import charset to ISO-8859-15
2010-06-14 22:34:50 INFO: Setting playlist charset to UTF-8
2010-06-14 22:34:50 ERROR: MediaTomb was compiled without js support, however you specified "js" to be used for the virtual-layout.

Do you know why?

Also if you know anything related to Samsung 7 series DLNA support would be great thanks.

I'm running mediatomb from a ubuntu headless server, I tried your lazy man's solution config and got some errors that I was unable to fix. Namely 2010-06-12 11:37:56 ERROR: /etc/mediatomb/import-custom-0.12.js : 20 x No such file or directory. I am wondering if this file can be found somewhere on the mediatomb site, or whether I am expected to know how to make this file myself or if mediatomb should have generated the file. Please let me know what I am supposed to do about import-custom-0.12.js and possibly make it available for download someplace! I look forward to using this solution for my ps3, thank you!