How to give read permissions to ReadyMedia

ReadyMedia (formerly known as MiniDLNA) needs to have read access to the directories and files in its media directories to be able to index them. By default, it runs as the user and group, both named as minidlna.

If the directories and files in the media directory have group read permissions, then ReadyMedia can get access to them by adding minidlna user to the group who owns those files:

$ sudo adduser minidlna joesgroup 

Some programs create directories and files that have no group read permissions. For example, the Copy.com client on Linux only provides user read access to the directories and files that is syncs. In such a case, you will need to tinker with the startup script of ReadyMedia and change the user it runs as to the user who has access to those directories and files.

On my Raspbian, I found that the startup script for ReadMedia was /etc/init.d/minidlna. Open it and look for the line where the username is provided and change that to the username you want. On my Raspbian, the relevant lines were:

if [ -z $USER ]; then
    USER=minidlna
fi

I changed minidlna in the above lines to the username who had read access to those files. In the worst case, you can even change it to root.

Restart the server for changes to take effect:

$ sudo service minidlna force-reload

Tried with: ReadyMedia 1.0.24 and Raspbian 7