Minidlna not indexing new files

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I added new files to the share that is used by my router’s minidlna service. For some reason, these files are not being indexed. I’ve tried restarting the daemon and disabling/enabling the service.

The log /var/log/minidlna.log doesn’t seem to indicate any issues:

# cat /var/log/minidlna.log 
[2018/10/02 08:13:33] minidlna.c:1048: warn: Starting MiniDLNA version 1.2.1.
[2018/10/02 08:13:33] minidlna.c:1089: warn: HTTP listening on port 8200
[2018/10/02 08:29:54] minidlna.c:155: warn: received signal 15, good-bye
[2018/10/02 08:30:11] minidlna.c:1048: warn: Starting MiniDLNA version 1.2.1.
[2018/10/02 08:30:11] minidlna.c:1089: warn: HTTP listening on port 8200

Symptoms:

  • the new files are valid and can be played on a workstation with VLC
  • other files in the Series directory are listed and can be played (via DLNA client)
  • the files’ permissions in the Series directory are -rw-r--r--
  • the Movies directory is not visible to the service despite being drwxr-xr-x (the same as the Series folder)
  • all folders and files are owned by root
  • greps of /var/log/messages don’t find anything related to minidlna

The configuration file /etc/config/minidlna:

# cat /etc/config/minidlna

config minidlna 'config'
    option port '8200'
    option interface 'br-lan'
    option db_dir '/var/run/minidlna'
    option log_dir '/var/log'
    option inotify '1'
    option notify_interval '900'
    option serial '12345678'
    option model_number '1'
    option root_container '.'
    option 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'
    option friendly_name 'Turris'
    list media_dir 'V,/mnt/raid/Media/Movies'
    list media_dir 'P,/mnt/raid/Media/Pictures'
    list media_dir 'V,/mnt/raid/Media/Series'
    list media_dir 'V,/mnt/raid/Media/Videos'
    list media_dir 'A,/mnt/raid/Media/Music'
    option enabled '1'

** edit 0 **
Adding an additional file to the Series folder (via FTP) causes the service to stop working:

09
** /edit 0 **

** edit 1 **
Deleting files from /Series does NOT cause a problem.
** /edit 1 **

What is the issue and how do I fix it?

Clear cache/database directory and restart minidlna.

I deleted the content of /var/run/minidlna directory (files.db,minidlna.pid), then restarted the service. The two files where recreated and the miniDLNA Status changed to include the file counts. However, when I added another file to /Series, the miniDLNA Status changed to read

The miniDLNA service is not running.

The same error has occurred, it seems.

What else can I try?

Did you erase art_cache dir?

I erased /var/run/minidlna/art_cache/.

Still no change in behavior.

I have these minidlna-related packages installed:

Package name Version
luci-app-minidlna git-18.328.59464-9636605-1
luci-i18n-minidlna-cs git-18.328.59464-9636605-1
luci-i18n-minidlna-de git-18.328.59464-9636605-1
luci-i18n-minidlna-en git-18.328.59464-9636605-1
minidlna 1.2.1-3

Where is the public project for minidlna? Github? Is this it? https://github.com/azatoth/minidlna.

Relevant: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man5/minidlna.conf.5.html

Upgraded to Turris OS 4. Using minidlna version 1.2.1.

minidlna service running. Counts list for audio, pictures, and videos.

Added a file (via SFTP) to one of the two folders that are monitored for videos.

This UI now indicates that The miniDLNA service is not running. The last two lines of the log file (/var/log/minidlna):

[2019/10/23 16:34:19] monitor.c:709: debug: The file /mnt/raid/Media/Series/the.first.s01e01.internal.1080p.web.h264-bamboozle.mkv was changed.
[2019/10/23 16:34:19] monitor.c:396: debug: Adding: /mnt/raid/Media/Series/the.first.s01e01.internal.1080p.web.h264-bamboozle.mkv

Restarting the service (# service minidlna restart) fixes the problem.

Is there a fix? Where is the source for this package?

Created issue minidlna stops after a file is added.

Just to be sure - is your minidlna dir a directly connected HDD, or is it a network mount?

Yes, the drive (RAID) is connected to the eSATA/PCI bus.

The same here. Any additional files cause dlna service crash. TOS4 and USB stick.

Exactly, that’s the same problem I have experienced too.

very similar (or maybe the same) problem also here. Reported it in another topic, but now (finally had time to play with it a bit more), it seems that the problems are also just large files (videos) over approx 1 GP. Restart fixes it. Deleting works. And HDD is connected through PCIe adapter.

EDIT - plus, no idea why, in my case, there are no logs written…
log_dir=/var/log/minidlna/
log_level=debug
directory itself was created automatically (so minidlna has access there, is not a permision problem), but that is all…

Can it be caused ba locales? When I have taken a look into debug mode, there seems to be a lot of mixtures between en_us, en, utf8. I am not sure, however it seems crash is caused by inotify when uploading file with cz specific letters. I was reading your conversation at https://github.com/openwrt/packages/issues/10357 and if it is “parser” issue it might be a reason…

i had some issues in the past with miniDLNA indexing when i was using for example:
list media_dir 'V,/mnt/raid/Media/Movies' together with RootContainer=standard, when i switched to “browser” container and redefined all list-media-dir to not use V/P/A attribute(with service restart), all went fine. Also try it first just with one folder first and add next later on , one-by-one and each time test it.

i assume you have rights and ownership correctly set, so minidlna actually can parse the subfolders/files :slight_smile: >> if the mount is actually shared samba folder and files were uploaded using smb protocol you might have strange chmod/chown on files/folders preventing minidlna to access them.

there is also this thread: miniDLNA not refreshing

Thanks for the tip. I will try it.

Nevertheless my symptoms are following.
My prerequisite: Videos stored on mirroring RAID with BTRFS. Files shared over Samba Share.
MiniDLNA starts at startup and indexing fine. MiniDLNA works stable and reliable.
When uploading additional file over Samba Share from Windows station, MiniDLNA crash. I can restart MiniDLNA manually, however new files are not appearing MiniDLNA. Solution is to remove DB and restart service. Than it is properly re indexed including new files. Than it works stable until another file upload (note I am using inotify enabled to allow adding new files into db). Nevertheless, I should mention, sometimes uploaded file is added into db w/o crash successfully. I have suspicion it is related either to format or most likely just symbols in file name; however, I did not have time to investigate precisely.