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I am having issues with miniDLNA parcing my videos from the source external harddrive.

Before we begin let me preface this letting you know if I copy a .mp4 to the internal hard drive, reconfigure minidlna.conf, restart minidlna, force-reload and load up http://192.168.0.11:8200 it sees the "1" video I added. I also can watch the movie with my DLNA Client without issue.

As soon as I change the source to my external hard drive, restart and force-reload it doesn't see any of my movies.

Here is some of my info:

Western Digital 2TB Ext HDD

Here you can see the directory to my Ext HDD "Videos" folder and a couple of examples of movie directories that reside in there:

demonikhan@demonikhan:/media/demonikhan/usbdrive/Videos$ ls -al | more
total 604
drwxrwxrwx 1 demonikhan demonikhan 81920 Jun  7 19:52 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 demonikhan demonikhan  4096 Jun  7 19:59 ..
drwxrwxrwx 1 demonikhan demonikhan  4096 Jun  6 21:58 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) [1080p] [YTS.AG]
drwxrwxrwx 1 demonikhan demonikhan     0 Feb 19  2015 12 Monkeys (1995) [1080p] {5.1}

Now I'm setting up miniDLNA for my Ext HDD:

Modifying minidlna.conf:

sudo nano /etc/minidlna.conf

media_dir=V,/media/demonikhan/usbdrive/Videos

Restarting Service:

demonikhan@demonikhan:~$ sudo service minidlna restart
[sudo] password for demonikhan:
demonikhan@demonikhan:~$

Here is the log entry for the restart:

[2018/06/07 21:12:27] minidlna.c:155: warn: received signal 15, good-bye
[2018/06/07 21:12:27] minidlna.c:1060: warn: Starting MiniDLNA version 1.2.1.
[2018/06/07 21:12:27] minidlna.c:1101: warn: HTTP listening on port 8200
[2018/06/07 21:12:27] playlist.c:135: warn: Parsing playlists...
[2018/06/07 21:12:27] playlist.c:269: warn: Finished parsing playlists.

Forcing a reload of the playlist

demonikhan@demonikhan:~$ sudo service minidlna force-reload
[sudo] password for demonikhan:
demonikhan@demonikhan:~$

Here is the log entry for the forced reload:

[2018/06/07 21:16:30] minidlna.c:155: warn: received signal 15, good-bye
[2018/06/07 21:16:30] minidlna.c:1060: warn: Starting MiniDLNA version 1.2.1.
[2018/06/07 21:16:30] minidlna.c:1101: warn: HTTP listening on port 8200
[2018/06/07 21:16:30] playlist.c:135: warn: Parsing playlists...
[2018/06/07 21:16:30] playlist.c:269: warn: Finished parsing playlists.

When I go to http://192.168.0.11:8200 it shows no videos are being loaded:

MiniDLNA status
Media library
Audio files 0
Video files 0
Image files 0

Does anyone have any clue why minidlna simply doesnt load any of my movies from the Ext HDD, but works wonderfully if the movies are stored on the internal HDD?

PS: I have searched for many hours online and cannot find any answers.

Aaron Hall
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Demonikhan2
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  • This could be a classy user rights issue. Please check the user:group rights on the ssd and compare it to your above ls -la. My guess is that the app can't enter the dir you gave it. Test this command for your external subfolder chmod 777 -R /media/demonikhan/usbdrive/Videos. See how that works. – s1mmel Jun 08 '18 at 05:41
  • Thank you for the response s1mme1, but I did as requested and no change. Oddly enough it doesnt seem to be a permissions issue as I get no error either when running restart or in the minidlna.log

    No changes in the log after restarting/force-reload

     – Demonikhan2 Jun 08 '18 at 06:59
  • I have been spending hours on trying to figure this out and I found a log in /var/log/syslog. I found this error in there: Jun 9 00:02:12 demonikhan minidlna[18008]: [2018/06/09 00:02:12] minidlna.c:631: error: Media directory "V,/media/demonikhan/usbdrive/Videos" not accessible [Permission denied]
    I know very little about chmod/chown as I have only been using Ubuntu for about 1 week. I've been reading and researching like crazy, but now I know this is the issue. Can you help?     – Demonikhan2 Jun 09 '18 at 07:24

4 Answers4

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I figured it out. I had to sudo nano /etc/default/minidlna and add the USER="root" and the GROUP="root" to that file. I win the day :)

Demonikhan2
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2

The issue is that all the folders in the tree and files need read permissions, if you mount and USB HDD commonly is mounted in /media/user, and the folder "user" usually don't have read permission for others

SEAUR
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1

I have been able to share contents from a folder on a NTFS drive adding in Ubuntu the user minidlna to the plugdev group

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev minidlna

This way, there is no need to run the minidlna service as root user

marco martínez
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0

I was struggling a while now and it turned out the following solution worked for me. It seems to me that the standard mount point for usb devices in Ubuntu is under your user name and that is causing the troubles. I cannot explain exactly what is causing it, but try this. It worked for me. Good luck!

Use gnome-disks and change the mount point to e.g. /mnt/example or /media/example.

With the tool gnome-disks you have the possibility to alter the mount point of your usb device.

Choose your usb device --> "Additional partition options" --> "edit mount options"

edelstueff
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