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More => Old Versions => Media Center 15 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Peter Engrav on September 17, 2010, 12:11:20 pm

Title: Attempts to download song from bogus URL, causing 10 second pause
Post by: Peter Engrav on September 17, 2010, 12:11:20 pm
This is a rephrase/clarification of a post I made a few weeks ago where I only really figured out the bug way down in the comments after a lot of wrong turns.

I'm using Library Server at home and connecting to it from work. At home all of my files are on a server called, cleverly, "files". So the "Filename" property for tracks stored in my library look like this...

\\Files\Music\The Beatles\Let It Be\001.Two of Us.flac

I installed Fiddler on my work machine to watch the outgoing http requests. When I start playing a track I see a request go out for

http://files/Music/The%20Beatles/Let%20It%20Be/001.Two%20of%20Us.flac

... which stalls for about 10 seconds and then 502s. Of course. That's the local UNC path that would work at my home "turned into" a URL and tried on a different network. Slightly spooky to think I'm hitting whatever random server at work might be named "files" (if there even is one). Anyway, as soon as the bogus URL times out, MC does the right thing and requests ...

http://www.mydomain.net:1234/^5C^5CFiles^5CMusic^5CThe^20Beatles^5CLet^20It^20Be^5C001.Two^20of^20Us.flac?conversion=3

which nicely works.

Interestingly, the bogus get doesn't happen on every play. If I start a track, listen to 5 seconds, then another, then another, there's only one request per song, the correct one. Seems as if waiting for a while and maybe jumping between albums / navigating "far away" in the library is part of what provokes the evil request.

A few days ago I had the "play local file if one is found that matches" checked (suspicious!) but I unchecked it and the problem remained (even with, eventually, reboots of every machine involved).

At the moment I've added a bogus "0.0.0.0 files" line into my hosts file at work so that the bogus URL will 502 instantly. Works to alleviate the symptom. But the bogus requests are still happening.
Title: Re: MC makes requests to bogus URL, results in 10 second "hang"
Post by: Matt on September 17, 2010, 01:33:21 pm
I just tried some APE files on our local network using UNC paths and couldn't reproduce this.

Is it only FLAC files?  Any other tips?

Thanks.
Title: Re: Attempts to download song from bogus URL, causing 10 second pause
Post by: Alex B on September 17, 2010, 01:42:11 pm
A few days ago I had the "play local file if one is found that matches" checked (suspicious!) but I unchecked it and the problem remained (even with, eventually, reboots of every machine involved).

This setting would have been the likely cause. If you now have it disabled on the client maybe the setting is not working correctly.

The setting makes the client to first try the original filename, i.e. to try file access through the standard Windows file system, including the local LAN shares. It can resolve problems with file types that cannot be streamed using "http".
Title: Re: MC makes requests to bogus URL, results in 10 second "hang"
Post by: Alex B on September 17, 2010, 01:52:46 pm
Peter, why did you start two similar threads?

I replied in the other thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59659
Title: Re: Attempts to download song from bogus URL, causing 10 second pause
Post by: JimH on September 17, 2010, 01:54:47 pm
I merged the threads.
Title: Re: MC makes requests to bogus URL, results in 10 second "hang"
Post by: Peter Engrav on September 17, 2010, 07:04:02 pm
Peter, why did you start two similar threads?
I replied in the other thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59659

Depends what you mean by the question.

If you mean "why two essentially identical threads created today" then that's 'cause I got an error message the first time I pushed Post that says "your session timed out, try your post again". I didn't check to see if something posted or not, I just dutifully copy pasted.

If you mean the other longer thread from last week where I slowly worked my way to the problem, that was just because I hadn't seen any replies to the other thread and thought it might have gone stale. It really only got interesting way at the end.