[HowTo] Setup MediaTomb (mediaserver) on WL-500gP and WL-500W

[rathalian]

I have a WL-500W and a PS3 and the challenge was setting up a media server (as the Asus firmware one did not work with the PS3) without paying for TwonkyVision. Twonky have limited their support for NAT devices to hardware vendors - I found an ASUS package after digging the developers area however they no longer release on the general downloads area and stated they no longer sell to NAT users (only vendors).

I installed uShare via ipkg and got it to run on the WL-500W without any issues (latest ipkg release) but it does not support the PS3 at the moment (backed up in some other PS3 forums). So uShare uninstalled.

I installed fuppes via ipkg and again got it to run without too many issues but only with the default config file. For some reason (and I am quite experienced in xml structure) when I added the PS3 required xml tags and values to the config file I got parser errors when restarting fuppes. Tried basic device settings and more advanced ones and also ones from the forums that folks confirmed worked, no go still parsing errors whenever I added the PS3 specific entries so I can only assume that the opto release is not the current one? I'm happy to be proven wrong here as ultimately I would like to use fuppes - but is has to work with the PS3 config settings.

Now - onto the tutorial for MediaTomb which (after some massaging) did work! Note all was done on Olegs firmware (1.x-10) via telnet.

First off install it from ipkg (ipkg install mediatomb). This installs all pre requisites. Go here for more info re installatin: http://mediatomb.cc/pages/download#optware but DO NOT set MT_ENABLE to true as autostart does not work on the wl-500X series.

Second recreate the database it sets up which is broken on the wl-500x installs (known issue). Use this process (pulled form one of our forum threads):
- cd /opt/share/mediatomb
- cat sqlite3.sql | sqlite3 mediatomb.db
- mv mediatomb.db /usr/local/root/.mediatomb

Third - setup the config.xml file using vi (vi /opt/etc/mediatomb/config.xml). I specified port, interface, restore and database backup settings. Port was specified due to a conflict with another service, interface to ensure mediatomb started on the 192.168.1.1 ip (so the PS3 could see it), restore ensures that when the sqlite database corrupts (and it will re a known bug on the wl-500x series) that when mediatomb starts up it restores the backup and finally the backup setting ensures the backup database file is periodically updated. Note when you start mediatomb it is always updates the backup file to the latest current database version. All these settings can be found here (along with where to place them in the xml file) - http://mediatomb.cc/pages/documentation#id2536421 go to section 6. Configuration File



When you have saved your config.xml file start mediatomb (type mediatomb to run) and test on your media client, in my case the PS3. This should then create a backup file of the sqlite database. Press Ctrl+C to shutdown mediatomb and then run the following to ensure the configuration is remembered after rebooting the router:
flashfs save && flashfs commit && flashfs enable && reboot

I've attached my config.xml file to help you get going (I've uncommented the settings that need to be enabled for the PS3 to work).

Finally I want mediatomb to start when router starts. You can run mediatomb in daemon mode so I'm going to add the following command to my startup routine: mediatomb -d (I'll update this post when I've worked out the best way to do this).

I hope this helps - mediatomb works great on the PS3!