gerbera as daemon

README.md

Load Gerbera as a System Daemon

This readme outlines how to add the Gerbera runtime as a system daemon using the systemd.

Prerequisites

You installed gerbera to /usr/local/bin/gerbera

If you don't know the path try which gerbera

Create a Gerbera System User

We should run Gerbera as a separate user to avoid vulnerabilities in exposing root access.

Here is a way to create a system user in linux command line

$ sudo useradd --system gerbera

Verify that the gerbera user was created

$ id -u gerbera

Returns the user id of the user

Create a Gerbera Configuration File

Create a new Gerbera config.xml in the destination of your choice. Store this file accessible to the gerbera user

Here we will use the default location /etc/gerbera.

$ sudo mkdir /etc/gerbera
$ sudo touch /etc/gerbera/config.xml
$ sudo chown -Rv gerbera:gerbera /etc/gerbera

Enable Systemd Daemon

1. Copy the systemd script to /etc/systemd/system

   $ sudo cp /gerbera/scripts/systemd/gerbera.service /etc/systemd/system/
   

2. Set the proper run permissions on the daemon file

   $ sudo chmod 664 /etc/systemd/system/gerbera.service
   

3. Modify the gerbera.service file to suit your system setup

   • Change the path of the gerbera binary to match your system

   For Example

   [Unit]
   Description=Gerbera Media Server
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   User=gerbera
   Group=gerbera
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/gerbera -c /etc/gerbera/config.xml
   Restart=on-failure
   RestartSec=5
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

   Ensure the User and Group value exist within your system

4. Notify systemd that a new gerbera.service file exists by executing the following command:

   $ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   

5. Start up the daemon

   $ sudo systemctl start gerbera
   

Success

Check the status of gerbera. You should see success similar to below

$ sudo systemctl status gerbera

● gerbera.service - Gerbera Media Server
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/gerbera.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2017-09-20 19:48:44 EDT; 47s ago
 Main PID: 4818 (gerbera)
    Tasks: 12 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/gerbera.service
           └─4818 /usr/local/bin/gerbera -c /etc/gerbera/config.xml

Troubleshooting

If for some reason the service fails to start. You can troubleshoot the behavior by starting gerbera from the shell

$ su gerbera
Password:
bash-4.4$  /usr/local/bin/gerbera -c /etc/gerbera/config.xml

2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: Gerbera UPnP Server version 1.1.0_alpha - http://gerbera.io/
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: ===============================================================================
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: Gerbera is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License version 2
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: Copyright 2016-2017 Gerbera Contributors.
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: Gerbera is based on MediaTomb: Copyright 2005-2010 Gena Batsyan, Sergey Bostandzhyan, Leonhard Wimmer.
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: ===============================================================================
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: Loading configuration from: /etc/gerbera/config.xml
2017-09-20 19:54:47    INFO: Checking configuration...