Gerbera Daemon

You can setup Gerbera to run as a daemon background system process

Using systemd

This outlines steps of how to add the Gerbera runtime as a system daemon using the Systemd. The gerbera installation uses cmake to configure and install the systemd daemon for gerbera. Default install path is /etc/systemd/system/gerbera.service

Create a Gerbera System User

You 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

Set Gerbera Permissions

The gerbera user must have access to config.xml file and to the directory referenced as the gerbera home. For example /etc/gerbera

$ sudo mkdir /etc/gerbera
$ sudo chown -Rv gerbera:gerbera /etc/gerbera

Enable Systemd Daemon

The cmake installation adds /etc/systemd/system/gerbera.service service file by default.

The installation does not enable the service daemon.

Notify systemd that a new gerbera.service file exists by executing the following command:
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
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...

Using Commandline options

If your system uses an old style system V init, commandline options are available to start gerbera as a Daemon:

–daemon or -d: daemonize after startup.

–user or -u: when started by root, try to change to user USER after startup. All UIDs, GIDs and supplementary Groups will be set.

–pidfile or -P: write a pidfile to the specified location. Full path is needed, e.g. /run/gerbera.pid.

Using solaris

You can use the solaris script provided in scripts/solaris to add Gerbera as a service in solaris.

Using launchd

launchd is the daemon engine in macOS.

Create new Launch Agent

Use the scripts/gerbera.io.plist as a starting point. Save to user’s launch agent path –>

~/Library/LaunchAgents/gerbera.io.plist

Load the Launch Agent

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/gerbera.io.plist

Start the Launch Agent

$ launchctl start gerbera.io

Stop the Launch Agent

$ launchctl stop gerbera.io