Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DonP]

I am building an Ubuntu Server box without GUI for the sole purpose of being a media server.  How can Media Center be installed and automatically run in such an environment?  In other words, can be be run as a service without loading the GUI?

[mwillems]

So the answer is split: MC cannot run without a GUI, but MC can be configured to automatically start on a headless server.  MC just needs an xserver, it doesn't need to be connected to a monitor though.  I wrote some systemd services to facilitate running MC on a headless server, see:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,120184.0.html

[BryanC]

I know a GUI-less media server seems like a good idea to save resources, but curating a media collection without a GUI doesn't make much sense to me.

You can certainly run headless, but I'd recommend using a remote desktop protocol so you can still use MC's standard view and other GUI tools you may wish to configure.

Right now I use x2go, which is perfectly acceptable solution although I am working on building a Docker container with Apache Guacamole built in. This means my clients need one less piece of software since the remote desktop is served by a web server that I can access with a browser.

[mwillems]

I know a GUI-less media server seems like a good idea to save resources, but curating a media collection without a GUI doesn't make much sense to me.

I agree that there needs to be a GUI somewhere, and preferably that "somewhere" is not in a web browser, which makes tag editing a nightmare (I'm looking at you Emby  )

But in JRiver's case you can use a full MC instance as a client of a library server to do most kinds of media management, and it seems like it wouldn't take much to make the clients fully capable of making changes on the server.  So a GUI-less server would be fine by me as long as the clients can do whatever the server can do.  Right now they can't, so I agree that for the moment we need to be able to access the GUI somehow. 

[DonP]

It's not clear why a GUI is so important as any new media files can be added from other systems or devices to the file folder which itself is on a NAS drive where it is shared throughout the network. It should see new files and automatically add them so a GUI is completely superfluous. By default Ubuntu Server installs without a GUI and what is the point of running media server software without it actually being served on a server? Apache, MySQL, Mail servers etc don't need a GUI and I see no difference to a media server. It appears that Media Center needs a serious rethink, or at least an optional server-only mode!

[max096]

What you can do is install it as a docker container
https://hub.docker.com/r/shiomax/jrivermc25

Its the closest you can get right now to running it 'headless'. Since there are no config files and no cli commands you can really use for jriver to configure it. You need the gui from time to time as it is now. But this way you can dodge having to setup a DE on your ubuntu server.

[bob]

You can also start it with the switch
/MediaServer
and it will start minimized and will not display blocking popup boxes.