How to Install MiniDLNA on FreeNAS 9.3 (Prior to Plugin)

[Frank Collins]

I had miniDLNA working in the legacy interface and tried to install in the new UI; my system is 11.2-U3 on a HP Gen 8 microserver.

I stopped the legacy miniDLNA jail and have tried to install the new version and it will just not work. Do I need to delete the legacy jail before it will work, but I am worried I will lose the one that does work. I have followed these instructions to the absolute letter and it will not work.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm currently running FreeNas 11.0-U4. off an old HP with an E7400 and 8gb of ddr2 ram and two 2tb drives in stripe (no crucial information on the drives, just downloaded videos and blu-ray/dvd rips). The server was knocked over and the USB drive was bent. FreeNas was running fine until then so I reinstalled the same version onto a new stick and imported in the volume. MiniDLNA was already installed, however, neither on my parents smart TV nor their blu-ray player could they access the folders with content. I deleted the MiniDLNA jail and have been trying to reinstall ever since. I can get up to "ee minidlna.conf" but I cannot move the cursor to edit the file. I tried using winscp to edit the files in notepad++, but it did not work. None of the devices can see the DNLA clinet. I can, however, access the NAS and its contents through windows explorer. MiniDLNA stopped working about a year ago, and back then I just reinstalled it using this guide and it was up and running perfectly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure what else I can tell you except maybe check the file permissions, maybe chmod 777 minidlna.conf but that would not help if your cursor keys are not working. Something else I'd try is to boot up a FreeBSD Live disc and then see if you can edit the file. Or maybe your computer took a harder fall than you think. Wish I could give you more advice but I think that is about all I can give without placing my hands on the system. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[joeschmuck]

I had miniDLNA working in the legacy interface and tried to install in the new UI; my system is 11.2-U3 on a HP Gen 8 microserver.

I stopped the legacy miniDLNA jail and have tried to install the new version and it will just not work. Do I need to delete the legacy jail before it will work, but I am worried I will lose the one that does work. I have followed these instructions to the absolute letter and it will not work.

I see no reason to delete the legacy jail but you do need to disable the jail from running or you would have two instances of MiniDLNA and that could cause issues. During the instructions, exactly which last step number worked and which step number failed (I wrote the procedure with steps to aid in troubleshooting and are part of my instructions in my original posting), and if there was a failure message, provide it. If the results of your followup posting are not obvious then I may need to setup a test server and give it a try. How much RAM do you have and are you using a lot of jails/VMs? If you are using a lot of jails/VMs then I'd recommend you disable/stop them while troubleshooting this problem, it is remotely possible there is some odd reaction but until I know the step numbers I asked for, I'm just guessing.

 

[Frank Collins]

Hello Joe,
After reading your last post, I stopped all other jails and restarted miniDLNA. I had Windows Media Player open on a W10 PC and when it restarted, miniDLNA Server briefly appeared with the correct content for a few minutes. It then disappeared, never to return.
I have now taken these steps, the first the most dramatic and no turning back;
1. Deleted the legacy jail.
2. Deleted the iocage jail.
3. Restarted FreeNAS.
4. Installed miniDLNA, following everything to the letter
5. It worked, though why it started only briefly before is beyond my understanding.

My HP Gen8 Microserver has the Celeron 1610 and 8 G of RAM.

 

[joeschmuck]

Hello Joe,
After reading your last post, I stopped all other jails and restarted miniDLNA. I had Windows Media Player open on a W10 PC and when it restarted, miniDLNA Server briefly appeared with the correct content for a few minutes. It then disappeared, never to return.
I have now taken these steps, the first the most dramatic and no turning back;
1. Deleted the legacy jail.
2. Deleted the iocage jail.
3. Restarted FreeNAS.
4. Installed miniDLNA, following everything to the letter
5. It worked, though why it started only briefly before is beyond my understanding.

My HP Gen8 Microserver has the Celeron 1610 and 8 G of RAM.

It's difficult to pin point the original issue since you did delete everything but starting over from scratch isn't a bad thing, especially if you originally started with a version of FreeNAS that did use the legacy jails and now you are migrating to the new iocage jails. It could have been an older file in the jails, that wouldn't surprise me at all. I don't think mixing legacy and new jails are bad but I suspect together they use most system resources which is less efficient. My advice (what I do) is after any significant change like adding a new jail or function, reboot the machine and ensure everything is working and no conflicts occur. Its important to catch problems right away to help you isolate the issues. If you were to install a new jail, then install another jail, then do some reconfiguration and a week later things stop working correctly, what did you do to cause the issue? Assuming you caused it of course. But I hope you don't have any further issues with FreeNAS.

And I'm glad you took the leap to fix it yourself.

Cheers

 

[HannesM]

Hi Joeschmuck,
your thread to install miniDLNA in a jail is great! :Dbut in my case, i've tried it and get a known permisson issue at my media folder :(
it looks like a acl issue between the jail and the media source (my pictures)
several comments are "now it's working" - but no solution how to fix this issue ?
I hope, you have a simple and quick solution to fix the access/permission issue ;)

thanks forward
Hannes

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

Hmmm... because I had two MiniDLNA instances (for different subnets) I may have done it differently (and it works :));

1. I created individaul shares (CIFS) in a pool for uploading files for my media (e.g., one each for Movies, Music, Photos).
2. Once the jail was created I logged into the shell and created three directories on the root of the jail for Movies, Music, Photos
3. I then shutdown the jail
4. I then re-configured the jail to mount the directories I created for the shares in the pool to each of the respective directories in the jail
5. Restart and "Bob's your uncle"

 

[HannesM]

@Newfoundland.Republic
This was also my mindset - but it looks like, the mounted unix dataset&file sstem for e.g. pictures had the incorrect access rights to use and see the recorded stuff vlan's (in my case) can be onnly configured without DHCP (error message by freenas)
in my infrastructure i've a layer 3 switch with several vLANs in production - and they are working and have all DHCP in place :)
if igb0 is the admin interface - can be used igb1 for vlan's with DHCP ?

thx forward and regards
Christian

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

Hmmm... I have 4 NICs so I have physically separated them and haven't tried the VLANs. Although, this is likely coming. A couple of thoughts:

1. WRT the DHCP issue, can you adjust your DHCP range(s) so that you statically assign the IP(s) of the jail(s) outside of the DHCP range(s)?
2. This may not apply to VLANs but it might provide a start:

• When I set up the jails to use a different NIC I have to use the advanced configuration.
• In the basic configuration, the ipv4 interface is vnet0 across all the jails on different NICs. (I'm not sure if you can set the address to DHCP as all my server IPs are static.)
• In the advanced network configuration I set the interface as being, for example, vnet0:bridge100 (my convention is that I use the "base" subnet as the bridge name so the 10.1.100.0/24 subnet is bridge100).
• I then specify the actual physical NIC to use (e.g. igb3) in that section. You may be able to select the VLAN in that section

I'm at work now and can't recall the exact sections. I will follow-up once I get home tonight.

 

[HannesM]

Hi @Newfoundland.Republic
i have a solution - controlled by your switch device :)

My solution
The Jail use the basic values as required based on your needs (no special config).

Requirement
Your switch can handle "MAC based vLAN" - that means - you put the MAC from your jail/plugin in the section on your switch and attach the vLAN "untagged" to the port from your FreeNAS device. After this config, my first 3 jails are moved in the correct vLAN and use DHCP from my central device like a VM or the managemend interface self

Regards
Hannes

 

[joeschmuck]

Been on vacation, still am, but it looks like you folks have figured it out. I only made these instructions for a very basic generic setup. MiniDLNA is very limited in what it can do but it will work for most people. Of course if MiniDLNA fails to work then I'd give Plex DLNA support a try.

I do understand how vLANs work, been playing a bit with them myself as of recent, but I'm no expert when it comes to networking.

For those who celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

Hi @joeschmuck - welcome back :)

I'd like to thank you for the instructions - they work for more than just setting up MiniDLNA which has help me out for other jails.

And a Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone else (we Canadian's did it about 6 weeks ago - but the turkey still causes a coma :p)

 

[Hytrozion]

hi @joeschmuck

I ran into a problem, I tried to properly install miniDLNA for a few days now and I followed your step and it worked properly... but it was a bit difficult because I got problem to install pkg thing so I followed these step : https://www.justinsilver.com/random/fix-pkg-on-freenas-11-2/
Which worked for me. So miniDLNA was working great and then I restart my nas and... no DLNA server on media player, the minidlna jails was up, but nothing would appear. So I tried the command "iocage minidlna onestart" but the shell said :

minidlna does not exist in /etc/rc.d or the local startup directories (/etc/ix.rc.d /usr/local/etc/rc.d), or is not executable

So I suppose I need to do your step every time my nas reboot... a bit awkward
(oh and I need to do the step to fix the problem with pkg thing every time it reboot too).

can you help me please ?

 

[joeschmuck]

So I suppose I need to do your step every time my nas reboot... a bit awkward

I would install Plex vice doing that.

can you help me please ?

Not sure, tell me your system setup, where you are installing MiniDLNA to, if you have made any changes, and what version of FreeNAS you are running. Of course I'd also tell you to try the installation again and ensuring the files are in the designated locations per the instructions. Once you give me some info back I could try the instructions on a VM of FreeNAS to see if I can reproduce the issue, maybe I need to make a change.

 

[Hytrozion]

Hi,
I gonna assume that I came to minidlna I don't know how (maybe it's because of my device I would like to watch videos from my nas (it's a samsung bd c5500)).

I don't know the difference between plex and minidlna, I'm going to search around the web.

for my system setup, I have 16Go of ram ddr3 with an i5 4gen, 2x1To of hdd (named thicc_boi), 500Go of hdd(named smoll_boi) and 160Go on a third disk for freenas. I have freenas 11.2-U6. Jails are installed on thicc_boi (so MiniDlna too), I followed excactly your path, took iocage 11.2 and that it !

thank you.

 

[joeschmuck]

for my system setup, I have 16Go of ram ddr3 with an i5 4gen, 2x1To of hdd (named thicc_boi), 500Go of hdd(named smoll_boi) and 160Go on a third disk for freenas. I have freenas 11.2-U6. Jails are installed on thicc_boi (so MiniDlna too), I followed excactly your path, took iocage 11.2 and that it !

You should have no issues using Plex, in fact you may have very good use of the Plex Player as well but Plex Media Server has a built-in DLNA server that works very well. It is a good viable option if you run into problems with MiniDLNA.

 

[Hytrozion]

Tanks you, I will install plex when I will be to home.

 

[Hytrozion]

hello, it's me once again !
I did a fresh install and I tried to reinstall minidlan (plex was doing the same wierd sh*t) and everything work except for one thing, I need to type everytime I start the jail "service minidlna onestart". When I type that, the shell give me three thing :

/etc/rc.conf: minidlna_enable: not found /etc/rc.conf: minidlna_enable: not found Starting minidlna.

I tried to look on the /rc.conf file but there is only one line "minidlna_enable="YES""

can you help me ?
thanks you

 

[rogerh]

I tried to look on the /rc.conf file but there is only one line "minidlna_enable="YES""

I presume it doesn't really have the inverted commas around the whole line? And you really mean /etc/rc.conf?

 

[Hytrozion]

Yes It's just for you guys to understand, and yes, this is the /etc/rc.conf file
inside it's like that :

Code:

#start minidlna
minidlna_enable="YES"

By the way I don't have those error anymore, just "starting minidlna."