Installing the latest version of MiniDLNA on Raspberry Pi

Installing the latest version of MiniDLNA (ReadyMedia)

Under Raspberry PI whether running Raspian Bookworm or DietPI Bookworm, the most recent version of minidlna available by the package manager is v1.3.0 released on Nov 24 2024. There have been some bug fixes since. The latest version at the time of writing this article v1.3.3 released on June 2 2023. You can check the the latest version here.

This article explains how to install the latest version.

Install Dependencies

sudo apt install build-essential autoconf autopoint libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libjpeg-dev libsqlite3-dev libexif-dev libid3tag0-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libflac-dev gettext

If MiniDLNA is already installed remove the current app and the user

sudo systemctl stop minidlna.service

sudo killall -u minidlna

sudo apt remove minidlna

sudo userdel minidlna

sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/minidlna.service

Download Binaries to a local install folder.

You can get the latest version from https://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/

mkdir ~/minidlna

cd minidlna

wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/minidlna/minidlna/1.3.3/minidlna-1.3.3.tar.gz?ts=gAAAAABnec7R0gSViIvopYyMuIztsJ52F2PhzRW7n925xBSWSuj92NJbKkegT8KgKntJEQCim4bKyqOUzQheOpba8WcmwBcswA%3D%3D&r=https%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fminidlna%2Ffiles%2Fminidlna%2F1.3.3%2Fminidlna-1.3.3.tar.gz%2Fdownload

Download Dependencies to build soruc

sudo apt install build-essential autoconf autopoint libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libjpeg-dev libsqlite3-dev libexif-dev libid3tag0-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libflac-dev gettext

Build

./autogen.sh

./configure

make

Install

sudo make install

Create the minidlna user

sudo adduser --system --group --gecos "MiniDLNA server" --home "/var/lib/minidlna" --no-create-home minidlna

Create the cache directory

sudo mkdir -p "/var/cache/minidlna"

sudo chown minidlna:minidlna "/var/cache/minidlna"

sudo chmod 750 "/var/cache/minidlna"

Copy then Edit the minidlna config file and set the media directory and settings as per yoour n

sudo cp ~/minidlna/minidlna.conf /etc

sudo nano /etc/minidlna.conf

Create a daemon service so that minidlna starts automatically

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/d

With the text editor now open, configure the daemon service with the following

User=minidlna

Group=minidlna

Environment=CONFIGFILE=/etc/minidlna.conf

Environment=DAEMON_OPTS=-r

EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/minidlna

RuntimeDirectory=minidlna

LogsDirectory=minidlna

PIDFile=/run/minidlna/minidlna.pid

ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/minidlnad -f $CONFIGFILE -P /run/minidlna/minidlna.pid -S $DAEMON_OPTS

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the service

sudo systemctl enable minidlna

sudo systemctl start minidlna

Check that the service is running successfully

sudo systemctl enable minidlna