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[loraan]

Can anyone suggest ways to troubleshoot this problem.

I am running Media Server on two machines in my home. A third machine runs Media Center. All machines are running the same version of MC (the most recent version). As far as I can tell, the configuration of Media Server on machines 1 and 2 is identical.

MC on Machine 3 can contact Media Server on Machine 1 no problem. When MC tries to contact Media Server on Machine 2, it gets to "Connecting to Server" and then times out. Here is some more troubleshooting information:

• I turned off all firewalls on all concerned machines to make sure that wasn't the problem.
  
• I used Media Center on Machine 1 to contact Media Server on Machine 2--same problem as when Machine 3 contacted Media Server on Machine 2.
  
• I used a packet analyzer to look at the traffic in both cases. In both cases, a TCP conversation starts, then there is an initial exchange of what looks like HTTP. In the "working" case, the initial TCP conversation is closed and then a second TCP conversation begins (which downloads the library). In the "doesn't work" case, the initial HTTP exchange occurs, but then it hangs and times out.
  
• Media Server on Machine 2 shows "receiving a connection" and "Current connections 1", but then it never shows downloading library.
  

I'm sort of at my wits' end trying to troubleshoot this. I can't figure out why it works with one machine and not the other. I'm hoping somebody can suggest a new place to look.

Thanks,

Joshua

[John Gateley]

Make sure the versions are the same on all three machines.

j

[loraan]

Thanks for the response. From my original post:

I am running Media Server on two machines in my home. A third machine runs Media Center. All machines are running the same version of MC (the most recent version).

[JimH]

Disabling a firewall may not be enough.  Uninstalling and rebooting may be necessary (because of firewall software bugs).

And, the number of connections to one machine is limited to three.

[loraan]

Thanks for the advice. I'm moderately certain that the firewall is not the issue, because I've used a protocol analyzer to capture the packets between the stations, but I'll give that a try.

Just to provide some additional information: The TCP conversation starts up fine, which indicates that the firewall is letting the packets through. Media Center (the client) sends a packet containing:

GET /Connect?v=3 HTTP/1.1..Accept: */*..Icy-MetaData: 1..User-Agent: JRiver Internet Reader/2.0..Host: 192.168.1.11:42000..Connection: Keep-Alive..Cache-Control: no-cache....

Then Media Server sends a packet containing:

HTTP/1.1

Then Media Server sends a packet containing:

200 OK..Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 00:56:32 GMT..Content-Type: text/plain..Cache-Control: no-cache..Connection: close....

The third and final packet closes the TCP connection. Then Media Center (the client) opens a second TCP connection and downloads the library. When I connect to the non-working server, the conversation simply stops after the second packet. The third packet doesn't come from Media Server.

What makes this so strange is that I uninstalled and reinstalled cleanly to make sure everything was at the same version, I checked the MD5 hash of the Media Server executable to make sure it really was the same on all machines... as far as I can tell, everything is identical on the working and non-working machines.

I expect that this is probably related to something weird on the non-working machine, maybe not to Media Server itself, but I hoped that maybe somebody with more insight into the code could tell me where things are breaking down.

Thanks again for the suggestions...

Joshua

[loraan]

I tried uninstalling the firewall--no change.

Here's the log from Media Server for both cases.

Working

Not Working

05/19/03 21:08:07 - sharer starting 05/19/03 21:08:07 - Initializing server. 05/19/03 21:08:08 - Server initialized 05/19/03 21:08:08 - sharer ready to accept connections 05/19/03 21:09:30 - received a connection 05/19/03 21:09:30 - Current Connections: 1 05/19/03 21:09:30 - ready for another connection 05/19/03 21:09:30 - sharing thread started 05/19/03 21:09:30 - sharing thread exiting 05/19/03 21:09:30 - received a connection 05/19/03 21:09:30 - Current Connections: 1 05/19/03 21:09:30 - ready for another connection 05/19/03 21:09:30 - sharing thread started 05/19/03 21:09:30 - request for library 05/19/03 21:09:32 - sharing thread exiting

05/19/03 21:11:06 - sharer starting 05/19/03 21:11:06 - Initializing server. 05/19/03 21:11:06 - Server initialized 05/19/03 21:11:06 - sharer ready to accept connections 05/19/03 21:11:08 - received a connection 05/19/03 21:11:09 - Current Connections: 1 05/19/03 21:11:09 - ready for another connection 05/19/03 21:11:09 - sharing thread started 05/19/03 21:11:09 - sharing thread exiting

[John Gateley]

Hi loraan,

Please post your network configuration (I read your post twice to make sure it wasn't already there).

Are you sniffing all packets? Are there any empty (ack) packets?

On the machine with the failing server: create a new library, import a single known-good mp3 or similar file into it, and start media server with that library. See if it still fails.

j

[loraan]

Now that's a good suggestion (sharing a small library). I will post my network config soon. Yes, I am capturing all packets between the two stations. I am using WildPackets EtherPeek (I'm a WP employee, so I have all the packet capture tools a heart could desire). All the normal TCP ACKs were there, but I left them out of my description for clarity. I didn't confirm this by hand, but EtherPeek's expert system didn't report any missing ACKs or retransmissions. I can include a tcpdump-compatible trace file if you really want.

[loraan]

Tried creating a library with a single known good file--same results. I should also say that every night, a script runs which copies the entire default library from my main machine (with the working Media Server) to my backup machine (with the not-working Media Server). So, as far as I know, the libraries are identical in the working/not working cases. In addition, in the course of my testing, I did a clean uninstall/reinstall, and tried sharing a completely empty library--same result.

Here's my IP config.

Client machine:

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.10
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

Working server:

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.11
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

Not-working server:

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.15
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

Thanks again for the assistance.

[John Gateley]

Is the network wireless? Are all three machines going into the same hub or switch?

Try physically switching the two servers: swap their locations and change their IP addresses. If the same server in the new location still doesn't work, it is in the software/OS, otherwise it is the network.

I was asking about the ACKs to find out if the "HTTP/1.0" packet was acked or not. It probably doesn't matter

j