MINIDLNA.CONF(5)

5 (file formats manual)

MINIDLNA.CONF(5)

NAME¶

minidlna.conf — MiniDLNA server configuration file

SYNOPSIS¶

/etc/minidlna.conf

DESCRIPTION¶

minidlnad(8) reads configuration options from the system-wide configuration file /etc/minidlna.conf, or the file specified with -f on the command line. The file contains keyword-argument pairs, one per line. Lines starting with ‘#’ and empty lines are interpreted as comments.

Boolean options are enabled by “yes”, “true” or “1”; any other value disables them.

The possible keywords and their meanings are as follows:

album_art_names

List of file names to look for when searching for album art, separated by forward slashes (‘/’). This option can be specified more than once.

db_dir

Path to the directory minidlnad should use to store its database and album art cache. Defaults to /var/cache/minidlna.

enable_tivo

Set to “yes” to enable support for streaming JPEG and MP3 files to a TiVo supporting HMO. Defaults to “no”. The Debian package is built without TiVo support, so this option has no effect.

friendly_name

Customize the name that the minidlnad server sends to clients. Defaults to “hostname: username”.

force_sort_criteria

Always use this SortCriteria, regardless of the SortCriteria passed by the client. For example:

force_sort_criteria=+upnp:class,+upnp:originalTrackNumber,+dc:title

inotify

Set to “yes” (default) to enable inotify monitoring of the files under media_dir to automatically discover new files. Set to “no” to disable inotify.

log_dir

Path to the directory where the log file should be stored. Defaults to /var/log/minidlna. Not used in systemd mode (-S) switch, see minidlnad(8), where messages go to the standard output instead.

log_level

Defines the type of messages that should be logged, and down to which level of importance they should be considered.

The possible types are “artwork”, “database”, “general”, “http”, “inotify”, “metadata”, “scanner”, “ssdp” and “tivo”.

The levels are “off”, “fatal”, “error”, “warn”, “info”, “debug” and “maxdebug”, listed here in order of decreasing importance. “off” turns off logging messages entirely, “fatal” logs the most critical messages only, and so on down to “maxdebug” that logs every message.

The types are comma-separated, followed by an equal sign (‘=’), followed by a level that applies to the preceding types. This can be repeated, separating each of these constructs with a comma.

Defaults to “general,artwork,database,inotify,scanner,metadata,http,ssdp,tivo=warn” which logs every type of message at the “warn” level.

max_connections

Maximum number of simultaneous HTTP connections. Many clients open several connections at once while streaming. Defaults to 50.

media_dir

Path to the directory containing the media files the minidlnad server should share. Use this option several times if you have more than one directory to share. To restrict a path to some media types, prefix it with one or more of the following letters, followed by a comma (‘,’):

‘A’ for audio files;
‘V’ for video files;
‘P’ for image files.

For example, to share only video files from /srv/multimedia/videos and /srv/multimedia/movies, only music from /srv/multimedia/music, and both audio and image files from /srv/multimedia/misc, use:

media_dir=V,/srv/multimedia/videos
media_dir=V,/srv/multimedia/movies
media_dir=A,/srv/multimedia/music
media_dir=AP,/srv/multimedia/misc

Without a prefix, all media types are shared:

media_dir=/srv/multimedia

merge_media_dirs

Set to “yes” to merge the contents of all media_dir directories into the root container. Defaults to “no”.

minissdpdsocket

Path to the MiniSSDPd socket, if you want to use minidlnad together with MiniSSDPd. Defaults to /run/minissdpd.sock.

model_name

Set the model name reported to clients. Defaults to “Windows Media Connect compatible (MiniDLNA)”.

model_number

Set the model number reported to clients. Defaults to the version number of minidlnad.

network_interface

Network interface(s) to use (e.g. eth0), comma separated. This option can be specified more than once. If unspecified or empty, minidlnad uses all the valid network interfaces (except loopback). Note that this selects the interfaces used for SSDP announcements; the HTTP server still listens on all addresses.

notify_interval

Set the SSDP notify interval, in seconds. Defaults to 895 seconds.

port

Port number for HTTP traffic (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer). Defaults to 8200.

presentation_url

Define the URL presented to clients (e.g. “http://example.com:80”). Defaults to ‘/’.

root_container

Use a different container as the root of the tree exposed to clients. The possible values are:

‘.’ to use the standard container (this is the default);
‘B’ to use the “Browse Directory” container;
‘M’ to use the “Music” container;
‘V’ to use the “Video” container;
‘P’ to use the “Pictures” container.

Any other value is used as the object ID of the root container. If you specify ‘B’ and the client device is audio only, then “Music/Folders” will be used as the root container.

serial

Set the serial number reported to clients. Defaults to “00000000”.

strict_dlna

Set to “yes” to strictly adhere to DLNA standards. This will allow server-side downscaling of very large JPEG images, which may hurt JPEG serving performance on (at least) Sony DLNA products. Defaults to “no”.

tivo_discovery

Method to use for registering with TiVo devices: “bonjour” (default) or the legacy “beacon”. The Debian package is built without TiVo support, so this option has no effect.

user

User name or UID to run as. This only works when minidlnad is started as root. The Debian systemd unit and init script already start it as the “minidlna” user, so to use another user, override User and Group in minidlna.service for systemd, or set USER and GROUP in /etc/default/minidlna for SysV init.

uuid

UPnP UUID of the device. By default it is built from the MAC address of the network interface.

wide_links

Set to “yes” to follow symlinks that point outside the media_dir directories. Defaults to “no”.

enable_subtitles

Set to “no” to disable subtitle support for unknown clients. Defaults to “yes”.

enable_thumbnail

Set to “yes” to generate thumbnails for video files. Defaults to “no”. This requires thumbnail generation support at compile time, which the Debian package has. See the following options for the thumbnail parameters.

thumbnail_width