Gerbera

Prerequisites

You need an active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet with a subnet in the target region.

Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is a sensible starting size. Choose a larger size for bigger libraries.

Configure the network security group (NSG) to allow inbound 22/tcp from your management network, 49152/tcp for the web UI and DLNA control, and 1900/udp for SSDP discovery so that DLNA clients on the same network can find the server. DLNA discovery uses multicast SSDP, so keep the server and your DLNA clients on the same VNet or subnet.

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for Gerbera by SecureAnyCloud, and select Create.

On the Basics tab, pick your subscription, resource group, region and size. Under Administrator account, choose SSH public key and paste your key. Under Inbound port rules, allow SSH (22).

Review the dedicated data disk on the Disks tab, then select Review + create and Create. After the VM is created, add inbound rules for 49152/tcp and 1900/udp in the network security group.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

Create the VM with the Azure CLI:

az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> \
  --name gerbera \
  --image <marketplace-image-urn> \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys \
  --public-ip-sku Standard

Then open the web UI and DLNA port and the SSDP discovery port:

az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name gerbera --port 49152 --priority 1010
az network nsg rule create --resource-group <your-rg> --nsg-name gerberaNSG \
  --name AllowSSDP --priority 1020 --protocol Udp --destination-port-ranges 1900 --access Allow

Step 3 - Confirm the services are running

SSH in as azureuser and confirm that Gerbera is active. Gerbera serves both the DLNA endpoint and the web admin UI on port 49152 on the VM's primary network interface. A small nginx bridge answers on 127.0.0.1:80, which gives local health checks a stable loopback address.

systemctl is-active gerbera nginx gerbera-firstboot

sudo ss -tlnp | grep -E ':49152 |127.0.0.1:80 ' | sed 's/ */ /g'

Step 4 - Read the per-VM administrator password

On the first boot of every VM, a one-shot service generates a unique administrator password. It writes the password, together with the site URL, to a root-only credentials file. Read the file with sudo:

sudo cat /root/gerbera-credentials.txt

The gerbera.admin.user is admin and gerbera.admin.password is unique to your VM. To confirm that the web UI answers locally, send a request through the nginx bridge:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'GET / -> HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/

Step 5 - Sign in to the web admin UI

Open http://<your-vm-ip>:49152/ in a browser. Account authentication is enabled, so Gerbera shows a login screen. Sign in as admin with the password from the credentials file in Step 4.

Step 6 - Browse your media library

After you sign in, open the Database view. It shows your catalogued library grouped into Audio, Photos and Video containers, which Gerbera builds automatically from the files it imports. UPnP/DLNA clients browse these containers when they connect.

Open a container, for example Photos > All Photos, to see the individual media items. Each item has actions to serve, edit or remove it.

Step 7 - Add your own media

Copy your media files onto the VM's dedicated data disk under /var/lib/gerbera/media, for example with scp. Gerbera imports them automatically. The library is watched, so new files are catalogued as they arrive.

You can also browse the server's filesystem and add specific folders from the File System view.

Create the library directory and confirm that the data disk is mounted:

sudo install -d -o gerbera -g gerbera /var/lib/gerbera/media mountpoint /var/lib/gerbera && echo "media library is on the dedicated data disk"

Step 8 - Verify authentication from the command line

The Gerbera web UI login is a token challenge. The client requests a session ID and a one-time token, then submits md5(token + password). The commands below show that the per-VM password authenticates and that a wrong password is rejected, and then list the catalogued library.

IF=http://127.0.0.1/content/interface
U=$(grep '^gerbera.admin.user=' <(sudo cat /root/gerbera-credentials.txt) | cut -d= -f2-)
P=$(grep '^gerbera.admin.password=' <(sudo cat /root/gerbera-credentials.txt) | cut -d= -f2-)
SID=$(curl -s "$IF?req_type=auth&action=get_sid" | jq -r .GerberaSID)
TOK=$(curl -s "$IF?req_type=auth&action=get_token&GerberaSID=$SID" | jq -r .token)
H=$(printf '%s' "$TOK$P" | md5sum | awk '{print $1}')
curl -s "$IF?req_type=auth&action=login&GerberaSID=$SID&username=$U&password=$H" | jq .

Step 9 - Security posture

The image ships hardened. The Gerbera daemon runs as an unprivileged gerbera system user. It is gated on a first-boot marker, so it never starts before the per-VM administrator password has been written. The credentials file is readable only by root, and the OS is fully patched at capture.

Verify the service user, the credentials file permissions and the start condition:

systemctl show -p User --value gerbera.service
sudo stat -c '%n mode %a owner %U:%G' /root/gerbera-credentials.txt grep ConditionPathExists /etc/systemd/system/gerbera.service

Where your data lives

The media library and the Gerbera SQLite catalogue live on a dedicated Azure data disk mounted at /var/lib/gerbera. The disk is separate from the OS disk and can be resized independently.

The disk is captured into and re-provisioned from the image, so your library and catalogue survive an OS disk replacement. Back it up with Azure disk snapshots.

Streaming to DLNA clients

When 49152/tcp and 1900/udp are open to your network, smart TVs, games consoles and DLNA player apps on the same VNet discover the server automatically over SSDP. They browse the same Audio, Photos and Video containers that you see in the Database view.

To change the administrator password, edit the <account> entry in /etc/gerbera/config.xml and restart the service with sudo systemctl restart gerbera.

Support

Every SecureAnyCloud image includes 24/7 support. For questions about deploying or operating Gerbera on Azure, contact us at sales@secureanycloud.com.

Deploy on Azure

Launch Gerbera on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure with 24/7 support from SecureAnyCloud.

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Need Help?

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sales@secureanycloud.com