Setting up Minidlna on Linux Mint

Minidlna is useful for broadcasting media around your home network. Multimedia can be streamed from the minidlna server to different upnp enabled devices such as computers/smartphones/game consoles.

Install the Pre-requisites

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties

Add the repository to get minidlna

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:djart/mindlna

update the repo

sudo apt-get update

Install minidlna

sudo apt-get install minidlna

Change the configuration file

sudo vim /etc/minidlna.conf

Change the user in the file to whatever user you want to use
Comment out the media_dir
Add an Audio directory, Video directory, Pictures directory. Also add the location that the Log files will be kept and where the database file will be kept

media_dir=A,/home/myuser/Music
media_dir=P,/home/myuser/Pictures
media_dir=V,/home/myuser/Videos
db_dir=/home/myuser/Cache
log_dir=/home/myuser/Log

Change the name of the DLNA server

friendly_name=myServerName

Restart the minidlna server

sudo service minidlna restart

If you see this error, Cannot connect to server, make sure to reload the server with the new content,

minidlnad -R