So…I wanted to share content to my 360 from my machines.  I have a mix of Windows and Linux running throughout the house but most of my content comes from two main sources (one windows and one debian box).  Sharing content from Windows to the 360 is quite easy with WMP but I have most of my content on the Debian server (set up specifically as a data repository).  I tried to use EnableRemoteContentSharing (search google…but not really needed) to try and get the data to the 360 from WMP directly and although the content was listed I was unable to play any of it back.  So…now to share directly from the Debian box.

Solution?  Fuppes.  It's a free UPnP server that can run on Windows and Linux.  I grabbed the latest SVN release, compiled it, set it up as per instructions for 360 compatibility and was off!  Of course, it didn't work right away.  There's a few things one must ensure.  First, the fuppes user (I'm on Debian here so I'm not running it as root) must be able to read the directories being shared as well as all the directories that are parents of the target share.  I believe that most people are running into issues at this point.  Second, avi files aren't being listed by the 360 for some reason…lots of reasons probably but you can rename your files to have them appear (after rebuilding the fuppes DB).  I also disabled transcoding as the 360 supports the formats I need it to support.

I got it working this morning at around 0530 so I haven't had much time to test it but hopefully this will those of you running into issues with it.