GeeXboX uShare is a UPnP (TM) A/V Media Server. It implements the server component that provides UPnP media devices with information on available multimedia files. uShare uses the built-in http server of libupnp to stream the files to clients.

GeeXboX uShare is able to provide access to both images, videos, music or playlists files (see below for a complete file format support list). It does not act as an UPnP Media Adaptor and thus, can't transcode streams to fit the client requirements.

uShare is written in C for the GeeXboX project. It is designed to provide access to multimedia contents to GeeXboX but can of course be used by any other UPnP client device. It should compile and run on any modern POSIX compatible system such as Linux.

GeeXboX uShare is copyright (C) 2005-2007 Benjamin Zores, and licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2).

Web site and file area for uShare is hosted on GeeXboX server :

http://ushare.geexbox.org/

The latest release of uShare should always be available on this site.

The following programs are required to build uShare:

• GNU C Compiler (gcc), 2.95 or later.

  The GNU C Compiler is part of the GNU Compiler Collection which can be downloaded from http://gcc.gnu.org/.

• pkg-config.

  pkg-config is a helper tool used when compiling applications and libraries. It helps you insert the correct compiler options on the command line. (see http://pkg-config.freedesktop.org/wiki/ ).

The following UPnP library is required to build and run uShare:

• Linux SDK for UPnP Devices (libupnp) 1.14

  The libupnp library is used to communicate using the UPnP protocol. libupnp can be downloaded from http://pupnp.sourceforge.net/.

The following DLNA library is required for proper DLNA support:

• libdlna, 0.2.1 or later

  The libdlna library is used to provides DLNA profiles informations. libdlna can be downloaded from http://libdlna.geexbox.org/.

Compile uShare by running configure and then make. This should produce an executable src/ushare, which can be used right away. No extra files need to be installed.

You can pass CFLAGS to configure, including -DDEBUG, in order to activate support for debug messages in uShare.

Example:

    CFLAGS="-Os" ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make

You can enable DLNA support by doing:

    ./configure --enable-dlna

If you want to install uShare on your system, run:

    make install

This will copy the executable and manual page into their appropriate directories (/usr/bin and /usr/man/man1 in this example).

For more information regarding configure and make, see the INSTALL document.

uShare runs from the console only. It supports the usual --help option which displays usage and option information.

    Usage: ushare [-n name] [-i interface] [-c directory] [[-c directory] ...]
    Options:
     -n, --name=NAME        Set UPnP Friendly Name (default is 'uShare')
     -i, --interface=IFACE  Use IFACE Network Interface (default is 'eth0')
     -f, --cfg=FILE         Config file to be used
     -p, --port=PORT        Forces the HTTP server to run on PORT
     -q, --telnet-port=PORT Forces the TELNET server to run on PORT
     -c, --content=DIR      Share the content of DIR directory.
     -w, --no-web           Disable the control web page (enabled by default)
     -t, --no-telnet        Disable the TELNET control (enabled by default)
     -o, --override-iconv-err       If iconv fails parsing name, still add to media contents (hoping the renderer can handle it)
     -v, --verbose          Set verbose display
     -x, --xbox             Use XboX 360 compliant profile
     -d, --dlna             Use DLNA compliant profile (PlayStation3 needs this)
     -D, --daemon           Run as a daemon.
     -V, --version          Display the version of uShare and exit
     -h, --help             Display this help

uShare gets its configuration from the /etc/ushare.conf file. You can force configuration options through command line.

uShare expects one or several directory argument (-c argument), specifying where multimedia files are stored. You should probably also use the -i option to specify which interface uShare should listen on.

    ushare -c /shares
    ushare -c /shares1 --content=/shares2

You can also perform remote control of uShare UPnP Media Server through its web interface. This let you define new content locations at runtime or update the currently shared one in case the filesystem has changed. Just navigate to:

http://ip_address:port/web/ushare.html

See the manual page for more details :

    man ushare

• Video files : asf, avi, dv, divx, wmv, mjpg, mjpeg, mpeg, mpg, mpe, mp2p, vob, mp2t, m1v, m2v, m4v, m4p, mp4ps, ts, ogm, mkv, rmvb, mov, qt

• Audio files : aac, ac3, aif, aiff, at3p, au, snd, dts, rmi, mp1, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpa, ogg, wav, pcm, lpcm, l16, wma, mka, ra, rm, ram

• Images files : bmp, ico, gif, jpeg, jpg, jpe, pcd, png, pnm, ppm, qti, qtf, qtif, tif, tiff

• Playlist files : pls, m3u, asx

If you want uShare to support more file formats, simply add its properties in the src/mime.c table.

If you need to listen on more than one interface, you will have to start multiple instances of the media server.

uShare keeps some information on files in memory. If your multimedia collection is huge, this might be a problem.

Many thanks to Oskar Liljeblad for its original work on GMediaServer (which is much more functionnal in terms of UPnP A/V features that uShare will ever be).

Note that this list of references is not complete.

• UPnP(TM) Standards (http://www.upnp.org/standardizeddcps/default.asp)

• UPnP(TM) is a trademark of the UPnP(TM) Implementers Corporation.