Sure, but the instructions depend on which solution you choose. Let's take Mediatomb as an example (you could try it, and if it doesn't feel good, just remove it and go on). You can find it's web page
here.
Installation instructions can be found
at the Download section. Scroll down to the Binaries (precompiled packages) section, until you find the distribution you use -- Ubuntu (
here). From the information there you can conculde that you should install the package "mediatomb". You can and should read the download page for instructions, but here goes..
If you are using the latest Ubuntu, Mediatomb packages should be in the default Universe reposities (if not or if you want to play around, see instructions for adding Mediatomb reposities from their download page), so you can install the application easily; just make sure you have the Universe reposity enabled. To do that, run the tool that allows you to configure software sources (found under the System menu of your desktop), or launch it from Synaptic's menu, or just press ALT+F2 and run
Code:
sudo software-properties-gtk
It should ask for your password (if you haven't run 'sudo' a moment ago), then open up the configuration window. From the first tab check the box, if it already isn't, in front of the line that ends "(universe)". Click Close (and if asked, agree to update the package lists).
Now that the reposity is in use, just install the program. You can run Synaptic (from the System menu; remember to click the "refresh" button to make sure your package lists are up to date), locate the package and mark it to be installed, or open a terminal (found under Applications menu in your desktop) and run
Code:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mediatomb
Again, type in your password if asked (with the first command, which updates the package lists; it should remember it with the second, if you don't wait for long between running them). When that's done, Mediatomb (along with it's dependencies) is installed. If you think you need (now or later) to run Mediatomb when your machine starts, you can also install mediatomb-daemon the same way:
Code:
sudo apt-get install mediatomb-daemon
Or you can start it manually when you need/want.
If you installed mediatomb-daemon, you should have Mediatomb running after a restart (or after you manually start it), and you can access the web interface either from your Applications menu (if a launcher was added) or by opening /var/lib/mediatomb/mediatomb.html in your browser -- you can bookmark that page for easier access if you do it this way. The other way to start Mediatomb is to run 'mediatomb' in a terminal:
in the end of the output it should give you a URL of the web interface, so hold CTRL and click it to open it up. If I'm right the user you run it with needs to belong to the "mediatomb" group, so if starting it from command line fails, that's probably the reason..solution is to add your user to the group "mediatomb". Because I don't remember if this is done automatically during the installation or not, you may want to log out and log in to check if it helps; if it doesn't, add yourself to the group this way (run the commands in terminal):
1) make sure "mediatomb" group exists:
Code:
sudo groupadd mediatomb
2) add your user to the group by editing /etc/group file:
Code:
sudo gedit /etc/group
scroll down and find the line that starts with "mediatomb" (there's only one such line), and add your username to the end, without whitespace. For example if the line looks like this (the number, 129, is probably different in your system):
change it to this (change "nesrail" to your username if it isn't that):
Code:
mediatomb:x:129:nesrail
Then just save and close the text editor, then re-try running Mediatomb:
If you ran it from the command line, you can close it by pressing CTRL+C, or by using
pkill or
kill or
killall to end the process if you need to.
The web interface is fairly straightforward: at the top (left) are two links, "database" and "filesystem". Database is what Mediatomb offers to the UPnP clients (your gaming console); filesystem is the content of your computer. So head to the "filesystem", locate the files and/or directories you wish to share and click the +-sign to add the currently selected item to the database (to share it). By clicking the other sign you can configure if Mediatomb should update the contents of a given directory when they change, if you need that. From the database side you can remove files/directories from the Mediatomb database so they aren't visible to the clients anymore. Once you're happy with the configuration, head over to your gaming console, search for media servers and see what's in there..
Some of the other UPnP servers may be easier to install or use, depending on how you take it, but they might have other drawbacks; you can install and remove them as you wish and see which one(s) work best for you. It probably doesn't get any more difficult than this (well, this wasn't actually difficult, at least if you installed mediatomb-daemon), so don't be afraid -- if you can't get something working, you can always remove it or try again (removing packages works through Synaptic, or by using apt-get with remove option).
Hopefully you got something useful out of this
More help for Mediatomb is at their site (see the link at the top of this post), including instructions on how to use transcoding etc..and if you can't figure something out by reading those helps, search the web; other sites have Mediatomb-related aid as well.
