Install GNUMP3d – A Streaming Media Server in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian

GNUMP3d is an open source simple, lightweight and robust streaming application for MP3s, OGGs, and other supported video formats. It gives a simple and attractive friendly web interface to stream your audio and video collection via a web browser, and stream playlists across a LAN network. It also possible to stream audio files with VLC, XMMS, iTunes, WinAmp and many more media players. Additionally, it also uses a database with a search function for the files.

This application is very useful for music lovers in term of sharing music across local networks or with online friends. If you’ve great collections of old classic music stored in your system, then it’s time to share them with your friends, neighbours and colleagues. I’ve tried this application in my local machine seems to be simple, fast, secure and mainly its free to use.

This software was primarily written in PERL scripting language and developed under Debian GNU/Linux, and able to run on any similar GNU/Linux based flavours.

How to Install GNUMP3d Streaming Media Server

The latest GNUMP3d version can be downloaded from GNUMP3d website or you may use following “wget” command to download.

# wget http://savannah.gnu.org/download/gnump3d/gnump3d-3.0.tar.gz

Once successfully downloaded, unpack it using “tar” command as shown below.

# tar -xvf gnump3d-3.0.tar.gz

GNUMP3d installation should require no more than the “make install” command. This will install the binary files in /usr/bin, with the configuration files in /etc/gnump3d/ directory.

# cd gnump3d-3.0
# make install

Once, gnump3d is installed on your system. Now you need to make necessary configuration to meet your requirements. The main configuration file ‘gnump3d.conf‘ file found in ‘/etc/gnump3d‘ directory. Open this file with an editor and make following suggested changes.

# nano /etc/gnump3d/gnump3d.conf

Find the line that says:

root = /home/mp3

And replace it to the location of your media files. For example, in my situation I store the music in /home/tecmint/songs).

root = /home/tecmint/songs

By Default gnump3d runs on port number 8888. If you would like to change this to 7878 or any preferred port number.

Find this line

port = 8888

Replace with the following line

port = 7878

Once, you make all necessary changes, restart gnump3d service using the following command.

# gnump3d &

Sample Output

GNUMP3d is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License,
and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under
certain conditions.

For full details please visit the COPYING URL given below:

  Copying details:
    http://localhost:8888/COPYING

  GNUMP3d now serving upon:
    http://localhost:8888/

  GNUMP3d website:
    http://www.gnump3d.org/

 Indexing your music collection, this may take some time.

 (Run with '--fast' if you do not wish this to occur at startup).
Indexing complete.

Once the indexing of the music is complete you may dump statistics of your archive via the ‘gnump3d-stats‘ program, by using the ‘–stats‘ argument. This will tells that the indexing has worked properly.

# gnump3d-index --stats

Total number of songs: 17
Total size of archive: 96.9Mb (101690593 bytes)
Total playlength     : 0 days, 1 hours, 13 mins 59 seconds

Once the indexing is over, you almost ready to access your gnump3d web panel first time. Open your browser and type.

http://localhost:7878
OR
http://ip-address:7878

The default music streaming directory for gnump3d is /home/tecmint/songs. It will showcase all media files placed in this folder. If you want to add more files, simple place the music files in this folder and it will be visible in the interface.

If you would like to change the default theme for gnump3d. Click on “Preferences” and select the theme from thereon.

By default the gnump3d is open for world, anyone who knows server IP address can connect and stream the available music, view statistics and perform searches. So, if you wish to add extra security layer you can use restrict access based on IP Address settings.

IP Address Restriction

Open “gnump3d.conf” file and comment the following line.

#allowed_clients = all

And add all the IP addresses, or ranges which you would like to enable access using the ‘allowed_clients’ setting as shown below.

allowed_clients = 172.16.2.0/8, 192.168.1.0

In addition to ‘allowed_clients’ setting there is a matching ‘denied_clients’ which allows you to deny specific address. The deny settings take precedence over the allowed settings, so in the below example all the IP addresses in the 172.16.2.x range have access except 172.16.2.2, and 192.168.1.25.

allowed_clients = 172.16.2.0/8, 192.168.1.0

denied_clients = 172.16.2.2; 192.168.1.25

Overall this tool is great for sharing music with friends over internet or locally. It would definitely very useful if you’re away from your computer and want to listen to your favourite music.

Reference Links

GNUMP3d Homepage

That’s it for now, I will be coming up with another great article very soon, till then stay tuned and keep visiting tecmint.