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Latest news

(2024/04/14) Configuration status web page updated automatically

Latest change

(2024/07/15) MinimServer 2.2 update 253 has been released

Installing MinimWatch 2 on Linux

Updating an existing MinimWatch installation
Installing MinimWatch 2 on Linux
Installing Java on Linux
Running MinimWatch 2 on Linux
Uninstalling MinimWatch 2 on Linux

Note: If you have a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS or Raspbian, see the Installing MinimWatch 2 on the Raspberry Pi page for details of how to install MinimWatch 2.

Updating an existing MinimWatch installation

To update an existing installation of MinimWatch (0.8.1 or later) to MinimWatch 2, do the following:

  1. MinimWatch 2 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 MinimWatch 2 to work correctly. 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.
  2. On the MinimServer 2 Downloads page, find the Linux row in the table of MinimWatch downloads table and click the download link that matches your hardware and software platform.
  3. 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 .
  4. Enter the command:
     <minim-home>/minimwatch/bin/update <archive-name>
    where <minim-home> is the directory where MinimWatch is currently installed and <archive-name> is the archive file that you downloaded.
  5. This stops any MinimWatch instances that are currently running, uninstalls the current version of MinimWatch, installs the new version of MinimWatch 2, and migrates your current MinimWatch configuration to your new MinimWatch 2 installation.
  6. 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.
  7. To start and run MinimWatch 2, follow the instructions in the Running MinimWatch 2 on Linux section.

Installing MinimWatch 2 on Linux

If you have a previous version of MinimWatch already installed, see the Updating an existing MinimWatch installation section for details of how to update your installation to a new version.

For a new installation of MinimWatch 2 on Linux, do the following:

  1. MinimWatch 2 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.
  2. If you're using GNOME Shell 3.26 or later (for example, on Ubuntu 17.10 or Debian 10 or later) and you want to use MinimWatch desktop integration, install the GNOME Shell extension TopIconsFix before installing MinimWatch. If you don't install TopIconsFix, you will see a message "unable to create tray icon" when you launch MinimWatch.
  3. You can install MinimWatch in your home directory or in another directory. If you're installing MinimWatch in another directory, create this directory using mkdir. In the following instructions, we'll refer to this directory as the <minim-home> directory.
  4. 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.
  5. On the MinimServer 2 Downloads page, find the Linux row in the table of MinimWatch downloads table and click the download link that matches your hardware and software platform.
  6. 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 .
  7. 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
  8. Enter the command:
     minimwatch/bin/setup
    The setup command asks whether you want to enable desktop integration (if available) and/or automatic startup (if available). If you enable desktop integration, a MinimWatch launch icon is added to your applications start menu. If you enable desktop integration and automatic startup, MinimWatch is started automatically when you login to your desktop. You can't enable automatic startup without desktop integration.
  9. If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, click the MinimWatch launch icon in your applications start menu. Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment, open a terminal window and run the command
     minimwatch/bin/startc
  10. MinimWatch 2 will scan your local network for all instances of MinimServer 2 and MinimServer 0.8 that are currently running. If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, MinimWatch 2 will display a tray icon for each MinimServer instance running on any other computer or NAS on your local network. The tray icon has a minim symbol (musical note) and its colour shows the status of the MinimServer instance, as follows:
    • If the icon is yellow, MinimServer is starting or stopping
    • If the icon is green, MinimServer is running normally
    • If the icon is red, MinimServer has detected an error
    • If the icon is white, MinimServer is stopped
    • If the icon is grey, no instances of MinimServer were detected

    Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment, you'll get a message
     <server-name> is running
    for each MinimServer instance running on your local network, where <server-name> is the display name of the MinimServer instance. This includes any MinimServer instances running on the same computer as MinimWatch.

  11. If MinimServer is running but MinimWatch 2 can't see MinimServer, check that you don't have a firewall blocking port udp/1900.
  12. MinimWatch 2 installation is now complete. If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, you can use the pop-up menu selections for each minim icon to configure and manage the MinimServer instance corresponding to this minim icon. For details of these menu selections, see the Controlling MinimServer using the minim icon section of the User guide. Alternatively, if you're running in a "headless" environment, you can configure and manage all MinimServer instances by entering commands from the terminal window. For details of these commands, see the Controlling MinimServer using console commands section of the User guide.
  13. If you're running in a graphical desktop environment, MinimWatch will continue to run until you terminate it by using the Exit comand from the minim icon pop-up menu. If you're running in a "headless" environment, MinimWatch will terminate if you enter the exit command or if the terminal window is closed for any reason.
  14. To change your current settings for desktop integration and/or automatic startup, you can run the minimwatch/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 the minimwatch/bin/setup command as follows:
     minimwatch/bin/setup enable_desktop enables desktop integration
     minimwatch/bin/setup disable_desktop disables desktop integration
     minimwatch/bin/setup enable_autostart enables automatic startup
     minimwatch/bin/setup disable_autostart disables automatic startup

Installing Java on Linux

MinimWatch 2 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 MinimWatch 2 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 MinimWatch 2.

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 MinimWatch command scripts.

Running MinimWatch 2 on Linux

MinimWatch 2 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 MinimWatch 2 to work correctly. 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.

To start MinimWatch 2 in a graphical desktop environment, click the MinimWatch launch icon in your applications start menu. MinimWatch 2 will display a minim icon for each MinimServer instance running on any other computer or NAS on your local network. These minim icons will appear in the desktop system tray or menu bar and you can use the pop-up menu for each minim icon to configure and manage the MinimServer instance corresponding to this minim icon. See the Controlling MinimServer using the minim icon section for details of the available menu selections. You can stop MinimWatch 2 by selecting Exit from any minim icon pop-up menu.

To start MinimWatch 2 as an interactive console application in a terminal window, use the command:
 <minim-home>/minimwatch/bin/startc
You'll get a message
 <server-name> is running
for each MinimServer instance running on your local network, where <server-name> is the display name of the MinimServer instance. This includes any MinimServer instances running on the same computer as MinimWatch 2. You can configure and manage all MinimServer instances by entering commands from the terminal window. See the Controlling MinimServer using console commands section for details of these commands. You can stop MinimWatch 2 by using the exit command or by closing the terminal window.

To stop all instances of MinimWatch (started in either of the above ways), use the command:
 <minim-home>/minimwatch/bin/stopall
This stops all MinimWatch processes that are running on this computer.

You can customize some MinimWatch 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 = -Xmx256m sets the Java maximum heap size to 256 MB. The line java = /opt/myjava/bin/java uses the executable /opt/myjava/bin/java to launch the Java runtime.

Uninstalling MinimWatch 2 on Linux

To uninstall MinimWatch 2 on Linux, do the following:

  1. Enter the command:
     <minim-home>/minimwatch/bin/uninstall
    This stops any MinimWatch instances that are currently running and uninstalls MinimWatch.
  2. You'll be asked whether you want to save your MinimWatch configuration file. It's a good idea to save your configuration file if there's any chance that you might reinstall MinimWatch in the future. If you reinstall MinimWatch in the same <minim-home> directory and run the minimwatch/bin/setup command, your saved configuration file will be restored.

Copyright (c) 2012-2024 Simon Nash. All rights reserved.