Ramon Ecung's Personal Blog

As you might know, I use my Ubuntu box as a media server that streams content to my Xbox/PS3. I currently use uShare because of it’s easy configuration (and it’s the only one I’ve found that works for me 100%!). The only problem with the software was that if something was added to my media directory, I would have to reboot in order for it to rescan my media directories.

Today I’ve come up with a way to address this issue which is actually so simple I’m not sure why I never though of it before. All you have to do is enable the web interface for uShare, and add a crontab using this command:

sudo crontab -e

Then:

5,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * wget http://127.0.0.1:[port]/web/ushare.cgi?action=refresh -o -

This should refresh your share every 5 minutes. I’m probably going to make mine scan every 15-30 minutes because this would probably spike the CPU too much for my personal media directory at 5 minutes.

I’ve used ushare for years without having an easy way to update the files, and now that I’ve figured this out, I’m going to be much happier with my server.

*** UPDATE***

Well it turns out that ushare seems to drop the connection if you’re watching media while it’s updating, so now I made it update once daily around 3am. Also, I’m using my original Xbox with Xbox Media Player to stream media from my server using the SAMBA protocol so its not really an issue. I still have my PS3 and Xbox 360 to stream HD movies too though.

*** UPDATE 2 ***

I’ve been using PS3 Media Streamer and it works like a charm. It’s a Java based UPNP file sharing application that’s focused on PS3 and Xbox 360 compatibility. It automatically refreshes files, and even transcode them to hardcode subtitles. It’s definitely worth checking out since it’s multiplatform (Windows, Mac, Linux!).