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Installing

On a typical Ubuntu or Debian system, you need tools to be able to bootstrap the compilation configuration:

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake libtool

.. and the libraries needed for gmrender, most notably gstreamer. On current Linux distributions, these are typically version 0.10 of gstreamer, but if possible, try to get a gstreamer version 1.0.x, the old version is not supported anymore. But, since this version is still quite common, here we go:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libupnp-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev \
            gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-plugins-good \
            gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly \
            gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg \
            gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio gstreamer0.10-alsa

(See below for the Gstreamer 1.0 installation; essentially only the version number is different, gmrender compiles with both versions).

Get the source. If this is your first time using git, you first need to install it:

sudo apt-get install git

.. Then check out the source:

git clone https://github.com/hzeller/gmrender-resurrect.git

Then configure and build

cd gmrender-resurrect
./autogen.sh
./configure
make

You then can run gmrender directly from here if you want. The -f option provides the name under which the UPnP renderer advertises:

./src/gmediarender -f "My Renderer"

.. to install, run

sudo make install

The final binary is in /usr/local/bin/gmediarender (unless you changed the PREFIX in the configure step).

Running

Init Script

There is a sample init script in scripts/init.d/gmediarenderer that could be a good start if you install things on your system.

(To Linux distribution packagers: please let me know if you have some common changes that might be useful to have in upstream; other than that, just do what makes most sense in your distribution)

Commandline Options

If you write your own init script for your gmediarender, then the following options are particularly useful.

-f, --friendly-name

Friendly name to advertise. Usually, you want your renderer show up in your controller under a nice name. This is the option to set that name.

-u, --uuid

UUID to advertise. Usually, gmediarender comes with a built-in static id, that is advertised and used by controllers to distinguish different renderers. If you have multiple renderers running in your network, they will all share the same static ID. With this option, you can give each renderer its own id. Best way is to create a UUID once by running the uuidgen tool:

$ sudo apt-get install uuid-runtime
$ uuidgen
a07e8dfe-26a4-11e2-9dd1-5404a632c90e

You take different generated numbers and hard-code it in each script starting an instance of gmediarender (In my init script, I just generate some stable value based on the ethernet MAC address; see "Init Script" below).

Also, you can do this already at compile time, when running configure

./configure CPPFLAGS="-DGMRENDER_UUID='\"`uuidgen`\"'"

--gstout-audiosink and --gstout-audiodevice

You can set the audio sink and audio device with these commandline options. Say, you want to use an ALSA device. You can see the available devices with aplay -L. The main ALSA device is typically called sysdefault, so this is how you select it on the command line:

gmediarenderer --gstout-audiosink=alsasink --gstout-audiodevice=sysdefault

The options are described with

gmediarender --help-gstout

There are other ways to configure the default gstreamer output devices via some global system settings, but in particular if you are on some embedded device, setting these directly via a commandline option is the very best.

--gstout-initial-volume-db

This sets the initial volume on startup in decibel. The level 0.0 decibel is 'full volume', -20db would show on the UPnP controller as '50%'. In the following table you see the non-linear relationship:

 [decibel]  [level shown in player]
       0db    100     # this is the default if option not set
      -6db    85
     -10db    75
     -20db    50
     -40db    25
     -60db    0

So with --gstout-initial-volume-db=-10 the player would show up as being set to #75.

Note, as always with the volume level in this renderer, this does not influence the hardware level (e.g. Alsa), but only the internal attenuation. So it is advised to always set the hardware output to 100% by system means.

Running as daemon

If you want to run gmediarender as daemon, the follwing two options are for you:

-d, --daemon                      Run as daemon.
-P, --pid-file                    File the process ID should be written to.

Misc options

--logfile <logfile>               Write a logfile.
    If you want this on the terminal use --logfile /dev/stdout
    This can be big over time, so only do it for debugging.

In particular when you file a bug, please always attach the output of such a logfile; start gmrender-resurrect in foreground mode (without -d) on the commandline and give it a file to log into. Attach that to your bug-report.

The following command makes sure to capture all logs from gmediarender and other log entries that might come from gstreamer plugins not using the gmediarender logging, all in one file:

src/gmediarender -f "MyRender" --logfile=/tmp/gmrender.log >> /tmp/gmrender.log 2>&1

GStreamer 1.0

gmrender-resurrect is prepared to compile with gstreamer 1.0, already available on newer distributions. This is the preferred version as the older 0.10 version is not supported anymore. Instead of the 0.10 versions above, just install these:

sudo aptitude install libupnp-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev \
         gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
         gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
         gstreamer1.0-libav

Then pulseaudio or alsa depending on what output you prefer (personally, I use alsa)

sudo aptitude install gstreamer1.0-alsa
sudo aptitude install gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio

Other installation resources

Raspberry Pi

If you're installing gmrender-resurrect on the Raspberry Pi, there have been reports of bad sound quality. For one, the 3.5mm output is very low quality, so don't expect wonders (though it seems that driver changes improved this quality a lot).

You can use gmrender-resurrect with Pulseaudio or ALSA (or whatever other output ways gstreamer supports). Personally, I use ALSA as it is the most simple and robust way (Pulseaudio would be a layer on top of ALSA anyway). See flag --gstout-audiosink above how to tell gmediarender to use alsasink.

By default, ALSA seems to attempt some re-sampling apparently; A user pointed out that this can be fixed by putting this in your /etc/asound.conf

ctl.!default {
  type hw
  card 0
}

Stephen Phillips wrote a comprehensive blog-post about installing gmrender-resurrect on the Raspberry Pi (July 2013):

http://blog.scphillips.com/2013/07/playing-music-on-a-raspberry-pi-using-upnp-and-dlna-revisited/

Arch Linux

There is an Arch package available here https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gmrender-resurrect-git/