Installing MinimServer on Linux
Installing MinimServer on Linux
Installing Java on Linux
Updating an existing MinimServer installation
Enabling system tray icons [NEW]
Running MinimServer on Linux
Installing MinimWatch to manage MinimServer
Uninstalling MinimServer on Linux
Note 1: If you have a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS or Raspbian, see the Installing MinimServer on the Raspberry Pi page for details of how to install MinimServer.
Note 2: If you have a Synology NAS, see the Quick start for Synology page for details of how to install MinimServer.
Note 3: If you have a QNAP NAS, see the Quick start for QNAP page for details of how to install MinimServer.
Note 4: If you have an ASUSTOR NAS, see the Quick start for ASUSTOR page for details of how to install MinimServer.
Note 5: If you have a NETGEAR ReadyNAS, see the Quick start for ReadyNAS page for details of how to install MinimServer.
Note 6: If you have a Melco music library, see the Quick start for Melco page for details of how to install MinimServer.
Installing MinimServer on Linux
If you have a previous version of MinimServer already installed, see the Updating an existing MinimServer installation section for details of how to update your installation to a new version.
For a new installation of MinimServer on Linux, do the following:
- MinimServer is written in Java and requires Java 8 or later to be installed. See the Installing Java on Linux section for details of how to install Java and/or check that the correct version of Java is installed.
-
You can install MinimServer in your home directory or in another directory.
If you're installing MinimServer in another directory, create this directory
using
mkdir
. In the following instructions, we'll refer to this directory as the<minim-home>
directory. - Important: All the following steps should be performed as a regular user without root privilege (don't use sudo) unless your system has no other users except root. This avoids problems with privilege conflicts later.
- On the MinimServer Downloads page, find the Linux row in the table of MinimServer downloads and click the download link that matches your hardware and software platform.
- Accept the license and download the archive file. For Intel or AMD, the archive file is . For ARM 64-bit, the archive file is . For ARM hard float, the archive file is . For ARM soft float, the archive file is . For PowerPC, the archive file is .
-
Use
tar
xf
to unpack the downloaded archive file into the<minim-home>
directory. For example, on Linux Intel or AMD you would use the following commands in a terminal window:cd <minim-home>
tar xf
-
Enter the command:
minimserver/bin/setup
Thesetup
command asks whether you want to enable desktop integration (if available) and/or automatic startup (if available). If you enable desktop integration, a MinimServer launch icon is added to your applications start menu. If you enable automatic startup, MinimServer is started automatically when the machine is started or rebooted. -
If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, click the MinimServer
launch icon in your applications start menu.
Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment, open a terminal window and run this command:
minimserver/bin/startc
-
If this is the first time you've started MinimServer, MinimServer needs to set your
content directory. This is the directory that contains your music files.
If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, MinimServer shows a file chooser dialog
on the desktop and asks you to select a content directory.
Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment and you have started
MinimServer using the
minimserver/bin/startc
command, MinimServer displays a terminal prompt asking for the content directory, which you need to enter as a full Linux-style path. If you need to add additional content directories, you can do this later. - If you don't select a content directory from the file chooser dialog or terminal prompt, MinimServer looks for a Music directory in your home directory. If this directory doesn't exist, MinimServer looks for a Music directory in the Linux root directory. If either of these directories exists, MinimServer uses it as your initial content directory. If you want to change this or add additional content directories, you can do this later.
- If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, MinimServer displays a small icon with a minim symbol (musical note) in the system tray or menu bar. This icon (the minim icon) shows the status of MinimServer and has a pop-up menu with a number of selections that you can use to configure and manage MinimServer. For details, see the Controlling MinimServer using the minim icon section of the User guide.
- On some versions of Linux, the minim icon might not display and you might see a pop-up saying that the tray icon could not be created. For information about how to solve this problem, see the section Enabling system tray icons.
- Wehn the initial content directory has been selected, MinimServer scans all the music files in all directories under the content directory. Depending on how many music files you have, this might take some time. If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, the colour of the minim icon (see above) is yellow while this scan is in progress. When the scan has finished successfully, the colour of the minim icon changes to green. If MinimServer startup fails for any reason, the colour of the minim icon changes to red and displays a pop-up message describing the problem. Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment, a terminal message is displayed either indicating successful startup or describing a startup problem.
-
It's a good idea to check the MinimServer log to see if there are any warning or
error messages about problems found by MinimServer while scanning your music files.
If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, right-click on the minim icon
and select "Show log". Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment,
you can see the log output in the file
or you can use MinimWatch on another computer to check the log. A warning in the log means that MinimServer has found something wrong with a file but has been able to read the file and make it available for browsing and playing. An error in the log means that MinimServer wasn't able to read the file. If you see a message you don't understand, you can get help by creating a new thread in the MinimServer support forum as described on the Support page.<minim-home>/minimserver/data/minimserver.log
- If MinimServer has started successfully, you can use a UPnP control point to browse your music library and select and play music.
- If you can't see MinimServer from a UPnP control point or if you're having problems trying to play music, check that you don't have a firewall blocking the following ports: udp/1900, tcp/9790, tcp/9791.
-
If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, MinimServer installation is now complete.
If you're running in a "headless" environment and MinimServer was started by the
startc
command, MinimServer will terminate if the terminal window is closed for any reason. To prevent this happening, use theexit
command at the command prompt to exit MinimServer, then enter the command:minimserver/bin/startd
This restarts MinimServer as a daemon background process that will continue to run after the terminal window is closed. - To configure and manage MinimServer when it's running as a daemon background process, you need to install MinimWatch either on this computer or on another computer that's connected to your local network. For details of how to do this, see the section Installing MinimWatch to manage MinimServer. You need to use MinimWatch 2 because the previous version of MinimWatch isn't compatible with MinimServer 2.
-
To change your current settings for desktop integration and/or automatic startup, you can run the
minimserver/bin/setup
command at any time. This command lists your current settings and prompts you to change them. As an alternative to changing settings using interactive prompts, you can specify a single argument to theminimserver/bin/setup
command as follows:minimserver/bin/setup enable_desktop
enables desktop integrationminimserver/bin/setup disable_desktop
disables desktop integrationminimserver/bin/setup enable_autostart
enables automatic startupminimserver/bin/setup disable_autostart
disables automatic startup - If you have updated from MinimServer 0.8 to MinimServer 2, some of your configuration properties in MinimWatch might be missing or greyed out. To restore any missing properties and enable all features previously available in MinimServer 0.8, select the License tab of the MinimServer configuration page and activate a trial license or full license as described in this section. You might also need to reinstall the MinimStreamer package (see the Installing MinimStreamer section).
- If this is a new MinimServer installation, it will be running as MinimServer Starter Edition with limited functionality and some configuration settings disabled (see the Starter Edition page). To use all features and configuration settings of MinimServer, you need to activate a trial license or full license as described in this section.
-
You can run an additional instance of MinimServer on the same Linux system by extracting
another complete copy of the downloaded MinimServer archive file
under a different
<minim-home>
directory. If you enable both instances for automatic startup usingminimserver/bin/setup
, both instances are started when you boot the system. Similarly, the MinimServer launch icon in the applications start menu starts all instances that have been enabled for desktop integration. -
Multiple instances don't share any configuration settings.
Don't attempt to copy the configuration file (
minimserver.config
) from one instance to the other because this causes problems when you run the new instance. Instead, you can use MinimServer profiles to export configuration settings from one instance and import these settings into another instance. Both instances can point to the same music library if you wish. Any updates and new releases must be applied separately to both instances. There is no limit to the number of instances you can create in this way. - Activating a full license for one MinimServer instance makes this license activation available to any other MinimServer instances that are running in the same Linux runtime (a physical or virtual machine). License sharing also applies if you are running MinimServer in a Docker or LXC container hosted on a QNAP or Synology NAS (see the Running MinimServer in a Docker or LXC container page). For more information, see this section and this section.
- License sharing does not apply to MinimServer instances running in other containers or virtual machines even if these are hosted on the same physical machine. This is because it is not possible for MinimServer to know which physical machine is hosting the container or virtual machine.
Installing Java on Linux
MinimServer is written in Java and requires Java 8 or later to be installed. If you're using GNOME Shell as your desktop (this is the default on Ubuntu 17.10 or later on and Debian 10 or later), Java 9 or later is needed for MinimServer to work correctly.
If you're using Debian or Ubuntu, you can use apt
or apt-get
to download and
install either the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or the Java Development Kit (JDK).
Depending on which version of Debian or Ubuntu you're running, the
JRE package might be named
openjdk-14-jre
, openjdk-14-jre-headless
,
openjdk-11-jre
, openjdk-11-jre-headless
,
openjdk-8-jre
or openjdk-8-jre-headless
.
The "headless" packages are used for
embedded systems without a graphical user interface and the other packages are used for
desktop systems with a graphical user interface.
Other Linux distributions have similar mechanisms for installing Java from a package repository. You can use either the JRE or the JDK to run MinimServer.
If you're running Linux x86 or Linux x64 as a desktop system, you can download the latest Oracle Java SE version (JDK 14) from this page.
If you're running Linux on an ARMv6, ARMv7 or ARMv8 (aarch64) machine, you can download Oracle JDK 8 (Java Development Kit) for ARM from this page.
Note: On ARM 32-bit systems, runtime performance of OpenJDK 8 is considerably worse than Oracle JDK and Oracle Java SE Embedded. On Intel or AMD systems and ARM 64-bit systems, there's no significant difference.
If you're running Linux on an ARMv5 machine, you can download the latest version of Oracle Java SE Embedded from this page. Review and accept the Oracle license agreement, then click on the first download link (ARMv5/ARMv6/ARMv7 Linux - SoftFP ABI, Little Endian 2). You'll be prompted to create or login to your Oracle account before you can download the file.
If you have downloaded the JRE or JDK as a .tar.gz file, use tar
xf
to unpack its contents to a local directory.
After doing this, create a link to the java
executable from a location on the path.
The usual location for this link is the /usr/local/bin
directory.
For example, if you have unpacked the .tar.gz download for JDK 8 update 211 into the directory
/usr/local/ejdk
, you can create this link by using the following command:
ln -s /usr/local/ejdk/ejdk1.8.0_211/bin/java /usr/local/bin
After installing Java, use the command
java -version
to make sure Java is installed correctly and is available on the path. This is important
for correct operation of the MinimServer command scripts.
Updating an existing MinimServer installation
If you are running MinimServer 2.1 or 2.1.2, the simplest way to update to MinimServer is to use the new "update install." For details, see the Update install section. Alternatively, you can update any version of MinimServer to MinimServer by following the instructions below.
- MinimServer is written in Java and requires Java 8 or later to be installed. See the Installing Java on Linux section for details of how to install Java and/or check that the correct version of Java is installed.
- On the MinimServer Downloads page, find the Linux row in the table of MinimServer downloads and click the download link that matches your hardware and software platform.
- Accept the license and download the archive file. For Intel or AMD, the archive file is . For ARM 64-bit, the archive file is . For ARM hard float, the archive file is . For ARM soft float, the archive file is . For PowerPC, the archive file is .
-
Enter the command:
<minim-home>/minimserver/bin/update <archive-name>
where<minim-home>
is the directory where MinimServer is currently installed and<archive-name>
is the archive file that you downloaded. - This stops any MinimServer instances that are currently running, uninstalls the current version of MinimServer, installs the new version of MinimServer and migrates your current MinimServer configuration to your new MinimServer installation.
- If the migration process requires any changes to system files, you might be prompted to enter your password to acquire root permission to make these changes.
-
If you have installed multiple MinimServer instances on your Linux system,
you need to run the
minimserver/bin/update
command for each installed instance. - To start and run MinimServer, follow the instructions in the Running MinimServer on Linux section.
Enabling system tray icons [NEW]
Some versions of Linux with a graphical desktop need additional configuration to display the system tray icon (the minim icon). This section describes how to enable support for system tray icons on some Linux distributions and versions. It will be updated to cover additional distributions and versions as needed.
If you're using GNOME Shell 3.26 or later (for example, on Ubuntu 17.10 or Debian 10 or later), install the GNOME Shell extension TopIconsFix.
On Fedora 41 with GNOME shell (the default desktop), do the following:
-
From a Terminal window, run this command:
sudo dnf install gnome-extensions-app
-
From a Terminal window, run this command:
gnome-extensions-app
- In the configuration window, enable Extensions (if not enabled)
- Under System Extensions, enable AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support
-
If is currently running without the icon showing, stop by running this command:
/bin/stopall
- Start from the desktop list of apps
Running MinimServer on Linux
MinimServer is written in Java and requires Java 8 or later to be installed. If you're using GNOME Shell as your desktop (this is the default on Ubuntu 17.10 or later on and Debian 10 or later), Java 9 or later is needed for MinimServer to work correctly. If you need to install or update Java, see the Installing Java on Linux section.
To start MinimServer in a graphical desktop environment, click the MinimServer launch icon in your applications start menu. The minim icon will appear in the desktop system tray or menu bar and you can use the minim icon pop-up menu to configure and manage MinimServer. See the Controlling MinimServer using the minim icon section for details of available menu selections. You can stop this instance of MinimServer by using the minim icon pop-up menu Exit selection or by using the minim icon pop-up menu Close selection from a remote instance of MinimWatch.
To start MinimServer as a daemon background process, use the command:
<minim-home>/minimserver/bin/startd
You can configure and manage the MinimServer daemon process using MinimWatch.
See the Running MinimWatch
section for details.
To start MinimServer as an interactive console application in a terminal window, use the command:
<minim-home>/minimserver/bin/startc
You can configure and manage MinimServer by entering commands from the terminal window.
See the Controlling MinimServer using console commands
section for details of the available commands.
You can stop this instance of MinimServer by using the exit
command
or by closing the terminal window.
You can also send commands to MinimServer (started in any of the above ways) using command scripting or the Web API. See the Command scripting and Web API sections for details.
To stop all instances of MinimServer (started in any of the above ways), use the command:
<minim-home>/minimserver/bin/stopall
This stops all MinimServer processes that are running on this Linux system.
You can customize some MinimServer startup options by creating a file named minimstart.conf
in the
minimserver/etc
directory. This file can contain either or both of the following lines:
javaopts = java-options
java = java-command
where java-options
is one or more options to be passed to the Java runtime
and java-command
is a fully-qualified path for the Java launcher command.
For example, the line javaopts = -Xmx1024m
java = /opt/myjava/bin/java
/opt/myjava/bin/java
to launch the Java runtime.
Installing MinimWatch to manage MinimServer
If you're running MinimServer in a "headless" environment or if you want to configure and manage MinimServer from another computer, you can install and run MinimWatch either on this computer or on another computer that's connected to your local network. The computer that you use to run MinimWatch can be a Windows PC, a Mac or a Linux machine. You need to use MinimWatch 2 because the previous version of MinimWatch isn't compatible with MinimServer 2.
For details of how to install MinimWatch, see the MinimWatch page.
Uninstalling MinimServer on Linux
If you have activated a MinimServer full license on this Linux system, you should deactivate this license before uninstalling MinimServer. This frees up the license activation for use on any other devices you have. You don't need to do this if you intend to reinstall MinimServer on the same Linux system. You won't be able to do this deactivation after MinimServer has been uninstalled.
To deactivate the license, open the MinimServer configuration page by selecting Configure from the pop-up menu of the minim icon (see above). Alternatively, you can type the URL http://x.x.x.x:9790 into the address bar of a web browser, where x.x.x.x is the local IP address of your Linux system. Select the License tab followed by Deactivate full license and follow the prompts. You need an active internet connection to deactivate the license.
After deactivating your full license (if applicable), do the following:
-
Enter the command:
<minim-home>/minimserver/bin/uninstall
This stops any MinimServer instances that are currently running and uninstalls MinimServer. -
You'll be asked whether you want to save your MinimServer configuration file.
It's a good idea to save your configuration file
if there's any chance that you might reinstall MinimServer in the future.
If you reinstall MinimServer in the same
<minim-home>
directory and run theminimserver/bin/setup
command, your saved configuration file will be restored.