SOLVED MiniDLNA & FireFly not updating media folders

[john-woods]

Hello everyone,

I recently made the switch from Ubuntu to FreeNAS on my media server at home. I am running FreeNAS 8.3 and have installed the plug-ins from the Source Forge page, Transmission, FireFly and MiniDLNA. My server is up and running and all my folder permissions etc. are working without issue. However, I have a small problem with my media sharing plug-ins Firely and MiniDLNA. Basically, they are not showing the correct directory contents when I browse the shares in iTunes/Windows Explorer/Mac OS.

I have set up Mount Points for Music and Video folders. The Mount Points within the Jail show the correct directory contents. i.e. these Mount Point directories accurately reflect all the sub-directories for my music and videos. The plug-ins have been configured to point at these Mount Points within the jail but they don't show the correct contents. Somehow, when I access the FireFly share with iTunes I am shown only my Audio Books and not the contents of the folder, i.e. my full iTunes music folder containing sub-folders for each Artist. When I browse to the UPnP share on my Xbox it shows only 29 directories instead of around 90. It is not the first 29 directories in alphabetical order but a seemingly random choice of 29 folders. When I browse to a subfolder with over 150 items in it all of these show correctly.

I have tried rebooting the system, enabling/disabling individual plugins or all plugins, deleted/re-installed the plugins. I have also tried to set up the script to scan my DLNA folder as described here:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?9312-MiniDLNA-Automatic-Scan-Fix

Please can you guys suggest anything I can try to force a re-scan/re-build of the libraries for these plugins. I am a novice when it comes to Command Line instructions but can give something a try.

Thanks everyone,
John

 

[john-woods]

Hi guys,

Well after some days I turned on my Xbox again and now it can see 90 out of 92 directories rather than just 29. I don't understand exactly why but I can only assume it is very slow at indexing a large collection of videos.

The FireFly server however is still the same. It refuses to show any music except for my audio books. And when I try to play the audio books via iTunes, on Mac OS or Windows, they don't play.

Thanks,
John

 

[joeschmuck]

What directories do you have your media in and what are the mount points? Screen shots speak volumes if you can provide them. There is an issue with mount points that point to the same location. Say your movies point to /media and your music point to /media. Well FreeNAS doesn't work well with mount points to the same location. The other problem is MiniDLNA will only point to a single folder using the plugin but you can manually change that if you like. Once I understand more about your problem, I should be able to lend some assistance.

The Automatic Scan fix only treats a specific problem with rescanning when a change occurs to the directory structure being monitored, it won't fix anything if your software isn't running fine in the first place which is my first note in that thread.

 

[john-woods]

Hi joeschmuck, thanks for the reply.

What directories do you have your media in and what are the mount points?

All my data is in /mnt/Storage
My videos are in /mnt/Storage/Videos with Mount Points at /mnt/Storage/Jail/Jail/media/UPnP/Videos and /mnt/Storage/Jail/Jail/media/Videos
My music is in /mnt/Storage/Music with Mount Points at /mnt/Storage/Jail/Jail/media/UPnP/Music and /mnt/Storage/Jail/Jail/media/Music





I have two Mount Points for each just as I was experimenting with different configuration options. I've tried pointing FireFly at either Mount Point but neither is working. As I said, MiniDLNA seems to be working now but not FireFly. I don't think I should have any issues with multiple Mount Points being in the same directory.

Thanks again,
John

 

[joeschmuck]

The mount point could be giving you the problems you are seeing but I have only experienced this issue when trying to share the same destination. But give this a try...

In your mount points, items 1 and 4, what are those for? If you can delete them and reboot the machine, let me know how that works for you. They both share the source and neither MiniDLNA nor FireFly are using the destination points.

I don't see any issues with your setup of MiniDLNA nor FireFly.

 

[john-woods]

I had items 1 and 4 there originally and used them in the settings for the Plugins. I created new Mount Points to try and force the Plugins to update the media they were showing but it didn't work. I tried as you said though, deleted these Mount Points and rebooted the server. Again, MiniDLNA is working fine but FireFly still shows only my Audio Books folder. Perhaps there is a configuration file somewhere that I can view or edit manually?

 

[joeschmuck]

I have a few questions and hopefully one of these will point the way to the problem.

1) What are the extensions of your music files that are not showing up (Just an example and make sure you actually look at the files please)? .mp3, .mpa, .mp4, .wma, etc...
1) What does the /var/log/mt-daapd.log file say? Does it indicate any problems?
2) If you get into the jail and investigate /media/UPnP/Music, does it show all the files you expect to see?


I'm out of ideas right now.

 

[john-woods]

The extensions were .mp3 and .mp4, it didn't seem to be filtering by extension but rather it was looking at the original contents of the Mount Point. This was the case even though the Mount Point had been deleted, moved, the Plugin reconfigured, server rebooted etc.

All Mount Points show the correct folder contents so that isn't the issue.

However, on a positive note, potentially because I deleted the unused Mount Points but I'm not sure, everything is working now. I can see all my music in iTunes when I access the server. The only option I changed for the Plugin was the refresh interval, I set it from 0 to 20. Regardless, both the UPnP and iTunes shares seem to be working without issue now.

All I have left to do is figure out why I can't access AFP shares :) http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?9729-AFP-Share-access-denied

 

[joeschmuck]

Well good luck and hopefully the developers will fix the mount points issues we are plagued with.

 

[john-woods]

Thanks for your help and suggestions, much appreciated.