Universal Media Server

[gr0x0rd]

With the recent news about Plex changing their TOS, I've been looking at alternatives. This looks great.

Thanks for the ebuild and all of the other efforts- I was able to emerge version 6.7.3 and get it up and running... sort of. I can bring up the interface, detect renderers, and access the admin interface on port :5001/console/home.. but I can't bring up the default web interface at 9001. I get an ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE. I've tried changing a number of settings incl toggling the httpv2 engine, running as root in headless mode, and so on... nothing. Enabling everything in the logger doesn't seem to shed any light on things. I can telnet to port 9001 when the service is running so something is listening there, but nothing comes up in the browser. I've tried Chrome 54.0.2840.100 and Firefox 45.5.0. Stopped iptables, no effect. In terms of Java I'm running Oracle JDK 1.8.0.112.

Is there something obvious I'm missing here?

EDIT: To become more familiar with the software, I fired up a VM and test drove the windows version. It worked as expected, so there must be an issue with my gentoo setup. Looks very promising!

Thanks for reading.

[Hu]

When you tried to access it through the browser, did you use http or https? Servers that multiplex both on a single port are rare, so if you pick the wrong one relative to what it offers, you'll get strange errors.

[gr0x0rd]

I used http. This is one of the reasons I tried the windows installer, to confirm a few things... the interface is accessible over http on port 9001. I tried https for shits and giggles, and it just times out.

I'm going to try to emerge an earlier version, and re-emerge all dependent packages, in particular the ones mentioned in this thread.

[Ivan The Viking]

Just reading this, I realized I haven't actually ever used the web interface, so I'm not certain what's broken there.
I just manually did the config by hand, which is pretty easy.

It's ~/.config/UMS/UMS.conf

The big take away is the setup of the shared folder in there,
I didn't setup any of the hard coded paths for the transcoding, it finds them just fine on its own as long as the user you're running it as has it available in their PATH.

I went and enabled the web interface just for grins and giggles, I got the page loaded with default settings at 9001 on the stock install.
It's pulling files from /opt/universalmediaserver/web for the content.
I copied in the WEB.conf file from the above opt folder to my user config folder as well afterwards, and it still works.
I recommend you check the log file to see what's going on, and it might tell why it's broken.

-Shawn

[gr0x0rd]

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the detailed reply! Your response got me scratching my head even more however... the server side of the setup seemed very intuitive to me, but my understanding was that the browser instance on port 9001 was the client portion, and this is how the media would be accessed by different renderers, etc. So if you don't use the web interface, what client(s) are you using, and how do they access the server content?...

My /opt/universalmediaserver/web was empty. I did notice the following in my log file before:

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20:43:12 INFO  Web configuration file: /home/gr0x0rd/.config/UMS/WEB.conf
20:43:12 WARN  Web configuration file not found: File "/home/gr0x0rd/.config/UMS/WEB.conf" not found

I figured that UMS would create this on-the-fly as it did with the other conf files upon first runtime... maybe a bad assumption on my part? Later on in the log, there are

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20:43:16 INFO  Created socket: /192.168.78.100:5001

(As expected with defaults)

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20:43:17 INFO  WEB interface is available at: http://192.168.78.100:9001

(which returns nothing, and)

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20:43:17 INFO  A tiny cache admin interface is available at: http://192.168.78.100:5001/console/home

(which works as expected).

Out of curiosity I had a look at the windows install and noticed a web.conf file in %ProgramData%\UMS. I copied this to my local .config/UMS and kicked the server, but still can't get any data out of the server on port 9001. I have re-emerged all of the dependencies in the ebuild, but I can't see how any of those would affect how the software generates its web content. I crawled the UMS.conf file that's generated by the default Windows install, and the one thing I did notice that wasn't present was the line

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http_engine_v2 

Obviously the windows install uses a different approach for the web server, so that's the most obvious place to examine I would think. I do have a pre-existing apache server running, along with a number of other web based frontends scattered about my machine... not any that are java based that I know of, however.

I'll keep chipping away at it and will post the resolution when/if found. In the meantime if you could let me know how you interface with the server to play the content I'd certainly like to know!

Cheers,

[Ivan The Viking]

Hi G,

Looks like you're being quite the sleuth on your issue, good luck there

I find it quite strange your /opt/universalmediaserver/web directory is empty. The tgz for UMS has it present, and my ebuild installed it just fine when I did that.
I just uncompressed it into a temp dir on my server, and it has everything in the web dir without issue as well.

Did you emerge it with multiuser on or no? I don't use that, and I haven't tested that USE flag since the first time I made the ebuild. If you use that, please try it without it.
I have been thinking of removing that for a few versions now.

I would recommend to delete the .tgz file from your distfiles and trying a fresh merge. If all else fails, I suppose you could put that stuff in there. Without that stuff, you certainly won't get any type of real web interface.

If you don't have WEB.conf in your home .config folder, UMS will fall back to using the one in /opt without issue, so I don't think that's a problem. I tested that as well just now.

So... now on to how I use this piece of software.
Port 5001 is for DLNA purposes. If you check out the about UMS page here at http://www.universalmediaserver.com/about/, you'll see it was originally based on a piece of software that streamed your media to a PS3 back in the day. This has since been expanded to be used with smart tvs, PS4, Xboxen etc etc. I use it to stream to my LG blu-ray player in the living room. My Pine64 under my other TV uses Kodi which supports DLNA and Samba. I have both running on my Pine64 server in the basement, and both serve the purpose, with Samba being faster and with less overhead.

On a PC, a Windows based box can usually find the server in WMP, and sometimes in Networking. VLC supports DLNA just fine as well, there are some how-tos you can find quickly with some google-fu on how to do that.

The basic web interface I hadn't used at all until you had mentioned it didn't work on your setup. I find it to work OK for some of the video formats Firefox supports, but it seems far more limited than using it through a DLNA supported program.

Good luck, and let me know if I can help some more.

-Shawn

[gr0x0rd]

Hi Shawn,

So you use it exclusively as a DNLA server! I get it now. I ran mediatomb long ago for a roommate who had a ps3. That project is now done, as is ps3mediaplayer. I'm looking at UMS as an eventual replacement for Plex, as I hinted in my first post in this thread. Plex is an absolutely fantastic piece of software, but I'm concerned about where things are going. Data collection is a slippery slope.

I followed your advice and re-downloaded your latest .xz file and placed it in /usr/portage/distfiles. I made a copy to match the ebuild version (universalmediaserver-6.7.3.tar.xz... this was necessary right?) and un-merged and re-merged. But my web folder is still empty...

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gr0x0rd@teletran4 /opt/universalmediaserver/web $ ls -al
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 20 12:57 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Aug 22 18:58 ..

I had a look at the ebuild code and the UMS.sh script, but didn't find anywhere that should populate that folder, unless it's packaged in the .jar file. What should be in that folder, and where are the default files sourced from?...

Also to be clear, I have all of the USE flags set except for multiuser and tsmuxer.

Once again curiosity got the better of me, so I traced back the source file from your ebuild, which led me to the sourceforge download. I downloaded UMS-6.7.3.tar.gz and cracked it open. Inside was a folder "web" with all sorts of goodies. I copied this to my /opt/universalmediaserver/web and voila. Everything works.

So, maybe just a part of the ebuild that needs some tinkering? I'm happy to help test, after all, we've come this far...

Cheers,

[Ivan The Viking]

Hi G,

Yeap, pure DLNA for me. I don't care much for web based video viewing past YouTube.

Mediatomb... now you're taking me back to when I first got a ps3. That was a great little tool, if not a bit unpolished.
That one has been forked and is back as gerbera. That one's also in portage, and another one I had tried before installing UMS by hand.

This brings me to the bug at hand, no web dir in opt. My hand install I originally did is why I have the web dir at all, I have come to figure out this morning.
I updated the ebuild to include the web folder now during its install.
I also canned the multiuser USE flag, it made for a messy looking ebuild and was a carry over from the original ps3mediaplayer ebuild I based mine on.
If someone wants it back, I'll bring it back.

Please re-download the overlay, the 6.7.3 ebuild should fix the /web dir issue. I just deleted my /opt/universalemediaserver after an unmerge, and emerged again, and everything is there as it should be.

Thanks for helping me fix this thing.

-Shawn

[gr0x0rd]

Hi Shawn,

Here's what I did:
* emerge -avC universalmediaserver
* rm /usr/portage/distfiles/universalmediaserver*
* rm -rf /opt/universalmediaserver
* layman -S
* emerge -av universalmediaserver

However, the web folder didn't show up for me.

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gr0x0rd@teletran4 /opt/universalmediaserver $ ls -al
total 47140
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root     4096 Aug 29 10:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root     4096 Aug 29 10:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     4096 Aug 29 10:41 documentation
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     3531 Aug 29 10:41 logback.headless.xml
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     3925 Aug 29 10:41 logback.xml
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Aug 29 10:41 plugins
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    12288 Aug 29 10:41 renderers
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    55228 Aug 29 10:41 UMS.conf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 48162073 Aug 29 10:41 ums.jar
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root     1768 Aug 29 10:41 UMS.sh
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      222 Aug 29 10:41 VirtualFolders.conf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     4014 Aug 29 10:41 WEB.conf

Did I miss something here? From my experience, once the overlay is added, everything should be retrieved through the emerge, and there shouldn't be any additional steps.

I am hoping that this package makes its way into the main portage tree. It really is a fantastic piece of software, and I expect it will get much better as the project continues!

If I could make another suggestion, it would be to change the way that headless mode is handled. This is the way I prefer to do things, but currently, I need to put my desired user/group into the /etc/conf.d/universalmediaserver file... for Gentoo, this is unusual. This then gets UMS reading the config files from my ~/.config/UMS folder... in headless mode, it would be preferable to manage these via /etc/UMS/ .

Thanks again for all your efforts on this!

Cheers,

[Ivan The Viking]

G,

Please download an overlay from

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net/univer ... ver.tar.xz

and manually put that in you usr/local/portage/net-misc folder.

The Gentoo overlay that layman is using isn't mine, and I don't think is sync'd up yet.

That should bump you up to the latest version and the fixed ebuild.


-Shawn

[Ivan The Viking]

Version Bump to 6.7.4

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net/univer ... ver.tar.xz

manually put that in your /usr/local/portage/net-misc folder.

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Changes since 6.7.3:

    General:
        Fixed a bug where thumbnails wouldn't always be generated when MediaInfo isn't used or available
        Fixed regression in folder thumbnails on non-Windows platforms
        Fixed a crash when the web interface's port is occupied, and do not fail restarting the server, if the server hasn't created yet (thanks, Zsombor Gegesy!)
        Fixed many general bugs
    Renderers:
        Added support for HE-AAC audio in MKV and MP4 files on LG BP550
        Improved detection and file support for LG WebOS TVs

-Shawn

[s34get]

the link you posted seems to be down...

[Ivan The Viking]

Indeed it doesn't work externally to my home network anymore.
Shame. My ISP has blocked common http, ssh, telnet, https ports.

This seems to work now. Please try.

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net:5858/u ... ver.tar.xz

-Shawn

[s34get]

thanks, this link works.

[s34get]

seems to be version 6.7.3

[Ivan The Viking]

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net:5858/u ... ver.tar.xz

Bumped to 6.8.0, tested and appears to work just fine on my server.

Changelog

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    General:
        Added shared folder selection to the wizard
        Improved matching of results from CoverArtArchive
        Improved text in the wizard
        Fixed detection of Java Runtime Environment 9 on Windows
        Fixed charset handling during subtitle conversions
        Fixed video not always transcoding when encoded audio passthrough is used
        Fixed an exception if the renderer replied to GetProtocolInfo but didn't include sink
        Formatting in UMS.conf
        Various bug fixes
    Languages:
        Added Bengali translation (empty for now, please contribute to it on Crowdin!)
        Improved support for Japanese characters
    Renderers:
        Added 4k support to VLC for iOS
        Added support for sending 4k MP4 videos to PS4 natively

[Ivan The Viking]

Version 7 is out.

Ebuilds are updated.

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net:5858/u ... ver.tar.xz

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Changes since 6.8.0:

    General:
        Added "TV Shows", "Movies", "3D Movies", and "Unsorted" folders to the "Media Library" folder
        Added right-click menu to navigation pane
        Renamed "Cache" folder to "Media Library" folder and enabled it by default
        Changed "Hide" options to "Show", e.g. "Hide Media Library folder" becomes "Show Media Library folder"
        When a file is added/changed/removed in a shared folder, UMS detects it
        Fully played tracking is stored in the SQL database
        Shared folders are scanned for changes on startup (configurable)
        Made folder scanning up to 10x faster
        Made Media Library browsing faster
        Gave folder scanning a lower priority than other UMS functions to make them work more smoothly
        Fixed some bugs related to sending media metadata (org_pn) to renderers
        Fixed bug where removing a directory in UMS does not remove its contents from the Media Library.
        Fixed sorting in dynamic folders
        Reduced lookups and bandwidth to OpenSubtitles
        Fixed MusicBrainz bugs
        Fixed many other bugs
    Languages:
        Synchronized translations with Crowdin
    Renderers:
        Added Samsung 8 Series config
        Updated FetchTV config
        Improved support for Samsung Galaxy S7

Enjoy!

-Shawn

[Ivan The Viking]

7.0.1 is out, and I added an ebuild for everyone.

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net:5858/u ... ver.tar.xz

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Changes since 7.0.0:

    General:
        Improved thumbnail support
        Improved folder scanning speed
        Reduced memory use during folder scanning
        Fixed fully played feature on clean installs
        Fixed tsMuxeR FFmpeg support
        Updated UMS.conf with changes from 7.0.0
    Languages:
        Updated German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian and Swedish translations via Crowdin
    Renderers:
        Added support for Roku TV (NSP 8)
        Improved support for Roku 3

[Ivan The Viking]

Hey all,

I've been offline for a bit, but I'm back with a new server at the house as well.

New server, new port #

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net:6868/u ... ver.tar.xz

It's up to 7.3.0 as well.

Works fine with IcedTea on stable amd64 on the new server.

Cheers,

-Shawn

[Ivan The Viking]

7.3.1 is out.

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hanges since 7.3.0:

    General:
        Fixed transcoding of videos with multiple audio streams with FFmpeg
        Fixed not being able to delete folders containing folders that are within watched folders on Windows
        Fixed Fully Played status not saving for some users
        Fixed files not being immediately deleted from the database if their parent folder was deleted
        Fixed standalone build auto updater downloading non-standalone builds
    Languages:
        Updated translations via Crowdin:
            Chinese Simplified translation completed
            French translation completed and validated
            Italian translation updated
            German translation completed
            Polish translation completed and validated
            Portuguese translation completed
            Portuguese (Brazilian) translation updated
            Romanian translation completed
            Russian translation completed
            Spanish translation completed

http://ivntheviking.bounceme.net:6868/u ... ver.tar.xz

[Ivan The Viking]

Hi All,

I'm not posting here often, but I am keeping up with releases at about 7 days or less from when upstream puts them out.

I just put 7.6.0 up for everyone's enjoyment.

[azp]

Is this still being maintained? It seems upstream is still chugging along!

[Ivan The Viking]

I am keeping it up on my end usually within a week or two of the releases for my consumption.
When I remember, I update the tarball.

Since you just inquired, I will update it now.

Enjoy.

[azp]

I still wish it could go into the official tree. I'm the guy that wrote the bug years ago, regarding the package.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/509006

Did you not become a Proxy Maintainer?

[Ivan The Viking]

TBH. I never really followed up on it.
Guess that's my not wanting the official responsibility of keeping up with it.

So far it looks like its just you and I who are still interested in it.

Perhaps I am going to look into it again.