MinimServer or MiniDLNA for my Raspberry Pi?

[Neil Smith]

Hi - just about to try a server on my Pi - does anyone have a view on which of these is better for:

Music Only - including plenty of lossless (Flac)

I have lots and lots and lots of music! 

Have tried a quick experiment with Minimserver on a windows PC and it seems pretty good so will probably try that if there's no advantage to using MiniDLNA

Thx!

[Ulric Thered]

Hello again. I found MiniDLNA configyration file easier to understand - for example defining whether to look for Audio, Video, Picture or All types of file in a certain directory… But that's just a personal opinion. If you're happy with Minimserver/watch then why not stick with it. I look forward to some more comprehensive replies to your post. (One warning - you may have to delay the loading of the deamon until the os has accessed your music drive(s). Wish I culd remember how I did it!

[Neil Smith]

You're not kidding - the approach to Minimserver config is crazy - it keeps stopping for no reason on my Pi too so I'm going to try MiniDLNA.

 

[Neil Smith]

Thanks for your replies ShellstaX - even if they have been deleted! Cataloguing Speed is something I'm looking at - I pointed MiniDLNA at one of my drives earlier this evening and it's still going - when I first installed and used a small folder it insisted on re-cataloguing after a reboot, if it does that every time it's not really going to work. Will be interesting to see if that's an issue with the Pi's low spec that might drive me back to using a windows version..    

[ShellstaX]

I forgot - you probably still get the emails :)

Yeah - I've been labelled as 'spam' (I think - due to repeated attempts to post links/ports). It's hopefully fixed now - we'll see.

Yeah - Pi may be too low spec for a Server really - esp with big catalogue. NASes can do the job well. (I do have a small server running off of a HDD hooked to my Router - it works OK).

Pi's can be great for a Renderer/Player - esp with a higher quality audio hat (e.g, HiFi Berry, Allo)

Have you checked out Volumio?

[Banana Bob]

Just to let you know that I successfully run minidlna on a Rpi 2B no problems. That Pi also runs an mysql server, printer server, scanner server, and the occasional cronjob. Most satisfied I am!

[Neil Smith]

Hey Bob - thanks for the input - does your Pi re-scan on every reboot? It looks like that's how it works for me and it needs several hours to complete - not sure it's going to be usable like that.

[Ulric Thered]

Sorry to ask what may be a stupid question, but do you have a line in your minidlna.conf file specifying the location of the minidlna db file as per comment lines

# Path to the (permanent) directory that should hold the database and albumart
#db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna

For example on my odroid running Ubuntu I have the line:
db_dir=/media/odroid/USBDrive/CDLibrary/minidlnadb

[Neil Smith]

Hey Ulric - thanks again - it was commented out in my file so I've un-commented it and changed a couple of other setting as here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA

It's now off re-creating the DB so I'll know in a few hours if that's helped! Probably need to keep an eye on the size too, 16GB card might need upgrading..   

[Ulric Thered]

No problem. Please let us know if it solves your issue
.

[Banana Bob]

I have put my minidlna database on the same drive as all the music. Also put the minidlna logfile on this drive - don't want it filling up the SDcard

[Banana Bob]

I hardly ever reboot - The last time I rebooted was 32 days ago.

I have however noticed a problem in the logfiles that means some files are not being updated - I will have to correct that.

I know that the first build of the database took forever. But thereafter it seems ok.

[Neil Smith]

Thx Mr Bob. Sounds like a good idea keeping it off the boot drive..

[Neil Smith]

Hi - it didn't - just reboot my Pi and it's started scanning again. Doesn't seem to be any quicker than previously so I guess it's going to rscan every time.

Thankfully a Pi doesn't need rebooted every few days like a Windows PC so I'll give it a chance.

[Neil Smith]

.. 24 hours and still scanning! Might have to think again!

[Banana Bob]

Neil

Just a note to let you know that I now have a library of 36774 and it took minidlna about 37 minutes to scan.

Also you may need to watch for the error

inotify.c:198: warn: WARNING: Inotify max_user_watches [8192] is low or close to the number of used watches [4949] and I do not have permission to increase this limit.  Please do so manually by writing a higher value into /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches.

To fix this I used sudo nano  /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches and changed the number to 100000

The other thing to watch is the permissions on the directories and files. I found 775 to work for the directories and 664 for the files.

[Neil Smith]

Hey Bob - thanks for the note - I have quite a bit more in my library and the timings you mentions are broadly the same.. Unfortunately I've found that even when the scan is complete HiFiCast on my tablet is unable to cope with the amount of music and becomes unusable.   I don't know whether this is down to the Pi serving up the data or the tablet consuming it, either way I've put things on ice and I'm building an app that'll talk directly to my server instead.