[arch-general] minidlna problems

[Mike Cloaked]

On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Peter Nabbefeld <peter.nabbefeld at gmx.de>
wrote:

>
> Hello,
>
> I've installed minidlna (community/minidlna 1.1.6-1), but cannot access
> any files. When I access it on port 8200, statistics count some audio
> files, but those are videos (mp4). I also cannot see a list of the files
> (well, I even don't know, if this would be expected behaviour). If I try to
> connect via UPnP using VLC, I cannot even see any file.  Portscan detected
> port 8200 listening, but neither 80 nor 1900.
>
> So, I do have some questions:
> - Why are my mp4 files recognized as audio files?
> - Is minidlna expected t oshow a list of files in its DB somewhere?
> - How can I detect minidlna working correctly?
>
> It took me a while to get minidlna going (though I run it on an
archlinuxarm machine) -  and it is referred to with a different name in the
wiki:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ReadyMedia

There are a number of things that have to be set right to make it work -
the permissions on directories including the home directory of the user
where the files are stored need to be set to allow the non-root user
running minidlna to access the files with the media.

eg in my case on my little media server:

$ ls -l /home
total 8
drwx------ 2 alarm alarm 4096 Feb 22  2016 alarm
drwxr-xr-x 6 mike  mike  4096 Jun  6 20:57 mike

then the minidlna.service file is:
$ cat /etc/systemd/system/minidlna.service
[Unit]
Description=minidlna server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=minidlna
Group=minidlna
ExecStart=/usr/bin/minidlnad -S
ProtectSystem=full
ProtectHome=read-only
PrivateDevices=on
NoNewPrivileges=on

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and this service is started in my case with a systemd timer to avoid
startup timing issues on the small SoC on which this runs.

Then the minidlna conf file is:
$ cat /etc/minidlna.conf
# port for HTTP (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer) traffic
port=8200

# network interfaces to serve, comma delimited
#network_interface=eth0

network_interface=eth0



# specify the user account name or uid to run as

user=minidlna

#user=mike



# set this to the directory you want scanned.

# * if you want multiple directories, you can have multiple media_dir=
lines
# * if you want to restrict a media_dir to specific content types, you

#   can prepend the types, followed by a comma, to the directory:

#   + "A" for audio  (eg. media_dir=A,/home/jmaggard/Music)

#   + "V" for video  (eg. media_dir=V,/home/jmaggard/Videos)

#   + "P" for images (eg. media_dir=P,/home/jmaggard/Pictures)

#   + "PV" for pictures and video (eg.
media_dir=PV,/home/jmaggard/digital_camera)
#media_dir=/opt
media_dir=A,/home/mike/Music/
media_dir=P,/home/mike/Pictures/
media_dir=V,/home/mike/Videos/

# set this to merge all media_dir base contents into the root container
# note: the default is no
#merge_media_dirs=no

# set this if you want to customize the name that shows up on your clients
#friendly_name=My DLNA Server

friendly_name=Odroid Media Server

# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want
MiniDLNA to store its database and album art cache
#db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna

db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna

# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want
MiniDLNA to store its log file
#log_dir=/var/log

# set this to change the verbosity of the information that is logged
# each section can use a different level: off, fatal, error, warn, info, or
debug
#log_level=general,artwork,database,inotify,scanner,metadata,http,ssdp,tivo=warn

# this should be a list of file names to check for when searching for album
art
# note: names should be delimited with a forward slash ("/")
album_art_names=Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albumart.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg

# set this to no to disable inotify monitoring to automatically discover
new files
# note: the default is yes
inotify=yes

# set this to yes to enable support for streaming .jpg and .mp3 files to a
TiVo supporting HMO
enable_tivo=no

# set this to strictly adhere to DLNA standards.
# * This will allow server-side downscaling of very large JPEG images,
#   which may hurt JPEG serving performance on (at least) Sony DLNA
products.
strict_dlna=no

# default presentation url is http address on port 80
#presentation_url=http://www.mylan/index.php

# notify interval in seconds. default is 895 seconds.
notify_interval=900

# serial and model number the daemon will report to clients
# in its XML description
serial=12345678
model_number=1

# specify the path to the MiniSSDPd socket
#minissdpdsocket=/var/run/minissdpd.sock

# use different container as root of the tree
# possible values:
#   + "." - use standard container (this is the default)
#   + "B" - "Browse Directory"
#   + "M" - "Music"
#   + "V" - "Video"
#   + "P" - "Pictures"
#   + Or, you can specify the ObjectID of your desired root container (eg.
1$F for Music/Playlists)
# if you specify "B" and client device is audio-only then "Music/Folders"
will be used as root
#root_container=.

# always force SortCriteria to this value, regardless of the SortCriteria
passed by the client
#force_sort_criteria=+upnp:class,+upnp:originalTrackNumber,+dc:title

# maximum number of simultaneous connections
# note: many clients open several simultaneous connections while streaming
#max_connections=50

Maybe you might see some settings that are different in your setup compared
to mine that may make a difference. In my case the minidlna server runs as
user minidlna - and the other important thing is the permissions/ownership
on the associated var files:

$ ls -ld /var/cache/minidlna
drwxr-xr-x 3 minidlna minidlna 4096 Jun  4  2016 /var/cache/minidlna
$ ls -l /var/cache/minidlna/
total 1332
drwxr-xr-x 3 minidlna minidlna    4096 Jun  4  2016 art_cache
-rw-r--r-- 1 minidlna minidlna 1355776 Dec  1 17:46 files.db

Mike

-- 
mike c