Jump to content

Running server on raspberry pi (yes it works...)


Duh

Recommended Posts

I was asked on the raspberry pi forums to post here, but yes i had media browser server running on raspbian. It really didnt take much work. I would have to walk through my steps again to give you guys a play by play, and when i have time i will try to do it. But for the moment the quick and drifty version is:

Apt get all the mono libraries. Some wont be needed, but i dont know which ones exactly. After trying to pick some and still getting errors, i just installed all of them. The ones in raspbians repositories worked for me.

Next step is to replace the sql lib with the one off the raspbian distro, need to have the arm built file.

Next is to replace the ffmpeg binary with the raspbian one. Raspbian is one distro that moved to the ffmpeg fork, but it seemed to work alright. Also do the fprobe binary. The whole key of what to do is replace everything that isnt mono ran with the arm built binaries.

There was one other binary i thought i replaced, but i cant seem to remember which one???

After that the server ran fine. It downloaded all of the artwork for my videos, and the server web admin pages all worked fine (though i had to connect to that on another pc, i didnt dig into why, but midori on the local machine wouldnt connect).

It took close to an hour for the server to catalog 200 gig of videos and download the artwork.

Clients can connect without issue, see all the artwork, and so on, i only ran i to one issue.

Using remote clients on firefox, chrome, and the mediabrowser IOS app, everything i tried to play was transcoded. The raspberry pi doesnt have the oomph to transcode unfortuenatly.

Speaking of oomph, sitting idle the server didnt take much of the cpu, but it is a memory hog on the model b i have. It doesnt take everything, but it takes quite a lot, and if it was a pi used for much more than file serving and dlna (and media browser), it would suck you dry.

So yes, server on pi runs, i just cant figure out why everything transcodes yet. I very well may be doing something wrong, but im not sure what.

When i have time to start from scratch and go through all the steps again i will, but the entire goal of what you need to do is replace binaries and libraries with the raspbian versions, dont use the supplied versions.

The mb server build i used was from the middle of july, and raspbian should have been fully updated to that point as well.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, well done for that.

 

Where did you get the ARM ffmpeg? 

 

Also for the other libraries, was it libgdi? Or maybe sqlite?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Beardyname

Using remote clients on firefox, chrome, and the mediabrowser IOS app, everything i tried to play was transcoded.

 

That makes sense, did you try a standalone client like MBT ? or even xbmc with the mb3 addon :) ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That makes sense, did you try a standalone client like MBT ? or even xbmc with the mb3 addon :) ?

Well, i expected the mb ios app to at least play without transcoding. My main purpose for setting it up was for chromecast ability. The format of all my videos is h264 (4.1 high profile) and aac. That should be natively supported by ios, chromecast, and even chrome should have no issues with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Beardyname

Well, i expected the mb ios app to at least play without transcoding. My main purpose for setting it up was for chromecast ability. The format of all my videos is h264 (4.1 high profile) and aac. That should be natively supported by ios, chromecast, and even chrome should have no issues with that.

 

Yeah they should, I was not sure on what formats your vidoes was in so i thought i should ask if you tried a standalone app :)

 

 

Also, how are your folders setup ? for linux unless I'm mistaken you have to add the folders, and then setup Path substitution (/mnt/storage --> \\devicename\share), Otherwise your client's cant access the files directly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Funny timing - I'm finally getting around to upgrading from MB2, and I'm unclear on whether I should be installing MB3 Server on my Windows 7 HTPC or on my "Server", which is really just a Pogoplug running ArchLinux with a 3TB drive attached with all my media, running as a SAMBA share on my home network.  I realize a Pogoplug is not the same thing as a Raspberry, but I'm guessing it will involve similar challenges and benefits to what you have encountered.

 

I'm a little bit fuzzy on the new MB3 architecture ... all I can figure out is that I would prefer to have the server running on my server, so that I can access it when my HTPC is not running, but I assume it will be considerably harder to set up on a Pogoplug than it would be on a Windows 7 HTPC.  Are there other reasons why I should or should not consider trying to install MB3 server on my Pogo?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

All this needs is the OP to share the SD card image that they made. Then a small army of people can iterate improvements.

 

Send him a PM!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
BeppoMonkeyBoy

I got this working last night, and the way i did it was very straight forward, using a mix of guides, my only issue was getting nas locations working in the library mangement side of things, i assume i have to mess around with samba to get that working but i'm not too familar with it at the moment. are people intrested in my step by step?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Beardyname

I got this working last night, and the way i did it was very straight forward, using a mix of guides, my only issue was getting nas locations working in the library mangement side of things, i assume i have to mess around with samba to get that working but i'm not too familar with it at the moment. are people intrested in my step by step?

 

short answer? yes!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BeppoMonkeyBoy

Really basic step by step. based on the guide for installing it in plain Arch, elsewhere in the forum, but tinkered around with for pi.

 

Using Arch Rpi. (from stock noobs)

pacman -Syu (update)

pacman -Sy wget

(Install the base-devel package with pacman, it is necessary for build the package later.)
pacman -Sy base-devel

(Go to a directory to build the package, in my example I used my root folder, and I create an AUR subfolder)

cd /root
mkdir aur
cd aur

Now get the tarball of the MB3 (Thanks to DaBungalow for making MB3 available on AUR)

wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/me/mediabrowser-server/mediabrowser-server.tar.gz

(Untar the package recently downloaded:)
tar -xvf mediabrowser-server.tar.gz


(Now, enter to the new uncompressed folder:)

cd mediabrowser-server


I then simply edited the PKGBUILD file and added armv6h to the arch= line [arch=('i686' 'x86_64' 'armv6h')]

nano PKGBUILD (add the armv6h to the list)

(Now, build the package, the -s option is for automatic resolve the dependencies, the -asroot is for executing as root:)

makepkg -s --asroot


After a while 12mins+ , you have a new file with .xy extension, install this file with pacman -U

pacman -U your-new-file.pkg.tar.xz


If pacman asks you for install some extra packages, install them.

after the installation, go to directory where MB3 was installed


Now, run the MB3 with mono:
mono MediaBrowser.Server.Mono.exe

You are ready, connect to your server-ip:8096/mediabrowser/

 

Feel free to add or correct bits of this.

Edited by BeppoMonkeyBoy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

thefirstofthe300

So my package still works on Arch ARM. I will update the package to reflect that. ☺

 

FYI, there should be a systemd service called mediabrowser-server that should run everything correctly. Can you get back to me on whether it works @@BeppoMonkeyBoy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BeppoMonkeyBoy

Will have a proper play with it when I get the chance, I got as far as setting up the plugins I have for channels, as well as a few config settings, and connectingnto the server via the android and iOS apps, need to look into adding nas shares, as well as setting up as a service. Using the package as a starting point was very simple, weather the pi is a viable server option is another question that will require a bit of tinkering.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thefirstofthe300

Will have a proper play with it when I get the chance, I got as far as setting up the plugins I have for channels, as well as a few config settings, and connectingnto the server via the android and iOS apps, need to look into adding nas shares, as well as setting up as a service. Using the package as a starting point was very simple, weather the pi is a viable server option is another question that will require a bit of tinkering.

I am pretty sure that the only thing it will do well is direct stream. It is just too underpowered to transcode effectively.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

kamakamadaun

Any idea what kind of power would be needed for transcoding? Would the beaglebone black do? My guess would be no... but it would be sweet to have MB running on a low power device.

Edited by kamakamadaun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

BeppoMonkeyBoy

Anyone else had any joy with this?

 

I'm running it from CD /usr/lib/mediabrowser-server/

but I'm stating to think that's not right, I can't get the service to run, and i'm banging my head against a wall trying to get network locations to be added in the web interface

Edited by BeppoMonkeyBoy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

blindpet

I was playing with this on Raspbian but couldn't get the movie cover posters to display even though they were being downloaded.

 

I compiled ffmpeg, sqlite and some other required libraries and it kept crashing. If you can provide some more details so I can finish my guide and label it as working I will be happy to share it with everybody.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BeppoMonkeyBoy

you can find a link to my pi image here (its a big file though) its basically all ready to get started, power it up and it will run as a service you don't even have to log in, just got to your [server-ip:8096/mediabrowser/] and you will get the configure your server pages, if someone could walk me though adding my nas drive links on it that would be nice as i can't get my head around getting that to work,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great stuff. Just manually type in your paths because it won't be able to discover them via the network browser.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BeppoMonkeyBoy

Manually typing in, eg \\server\share or \\ip\share keeps coming back with not found, might be to do with the wireless connection. but every thing i try is a big no.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BeppoMonkeyBoy

I provided it as a starting point for people who wanted a quick mess around with it to see if was viable for small implementations, in a low energy use environment, I used Arch cause it was really easy and did the job, mainly because other people have already done most of the work for me :)

 

I found that finding information for other distros was either confusing or simply not there, also if you where going to use this on a pi, you basically wouldn't want to be running anything else on the pi apart from this.

 

the only thing i do extra from the steps i listed is not run the mono command and simply run

 

systemctl enable mediabrowser-server.service

systemctl start mediabrowser-server.service

 

on my setup i also did some wifi dongle stuff but that's not important.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...