Topic: Media Server connection problems (Read 4384 times)

LisaRCT · « **on:** October 29, 2003, 06:40:14 pm »

I tried to use Media Server, but was unsucessful.
Although my PC (Unit B) located the Media Server (from Unit A) on my network, it failed to retrieve the library.
This happened on every attempt, and obviously since it had connected (just couldn't get the library) changing ports did not help.

When I tried to set it up in the reverse direction {set-up my usual client (Unit B) as the Media Server, and connected to it from what is normally my server (Unit A), I was sucessful and was able to play the few files I had on that machine (Unit B).

Yet, when I went back to the original setup (switched them back to the way I NEED them - Unit A server, Unit B client) I again was unable to retrieve the library across the Media Server from my client.

I did try modifying and then eliminating my firewall software, hich again was of no help.

?

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** October 29, 2003, 07:22:48 pm »

Check the firewall on both machines.

Both machines must run the same build of MC.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #2 on:** October 29, 2003, 07:31:51 pm »

Quote from: JimH on October 29, 2003, 07:22:48 pm

Check the firewall on both machines.

Check

Quote

Both machines must run the same build of MC.

Check

JimH · « **Reply #3 on:** October 29, 2003, 08:25:59 pm »

I don't know.

There are weird things that can happen on home networks. Your router, for example, could be forwarding packets somewhere else. If the problem occurs on several ports, that's not likely.

I really don't know.

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #4 on:** October 29, 2003, 10:37:49 pm »

LisaRCT,

Are you sure that nour Media Server is sharing?

I thought I saw a build a few ago which didn't seem to start sharing when it was started. ie. Media Server started up no probs, but it wasn't sharing anything...

kwake · « **Reply #5 on:** October 30, 2003, 02:39:31 am »

I've been having the same (I think) problem getting Media Server to work at my place.

For me, I have a home PC running XP Pro and Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) which I call my server.

Then, I have a work laptop running Win2K that I plug into my XP server machine to be able to connect to the office via VPN tunnel.

This all works fine, but Media Center doesn't for some reason. I do manually enable sharing, the laptop does find the media server running on the XP machine, but it times out trying to retrieve the library stating an "Unknown Error".

I have also tried disabling the firewalls on both machines (temporarily whilst trying to get it to work) as well as making sure to choose a port that was not already in use.

One strange thing is that my port 80 is being used by something, but I'm not sure what - probably the ICS service... But even choosing 81 or 2112, I still get the "Unknown error" message at the client side.

BTW, I'm running build 279 on both machines.

Regards,
Kwake

LisaRCT · « **Reply #6 on:** October 30, 2003, 09:49:25 am »

Sure sounds familiar!
Only differences I see between our situations:
1- I am running Win2K on both my machines
2- I am running MC9.1.291 on both machines
3- I am NOT sharing an internet connection

John Gateley · « **Reply #7 on:** October 30, 2003, 10:30:45 am »

Hi LisaRCT

Make sure you are sharing a valid libray (you may be sharing the wrong one).

Try running Media Server on A, and then running Media Center on A as well, connecting to itself.

j

John Gateley · « **Reply #8 on:** October 30, 2003, 10:33:10 am »

Kwake,

Sounds pretty complex, something is probably interfering with the communication.

Sometimes disabling a firewall is not enough, you must actually remove it.

j

LisaRCT · « **Reply #9 on:** October 30, 2003, 11:02:59 am »

Machine B can serve and receive from itself

Machine A canNOT

Neither one is connecing to the other, after finding the other's MediaServer and connecting they time out on Get Library

John Gateley · « **Reply #10 on:** October 30, 2003, 01:12:39 pm »

Just to confirm: on machine A you start Media Center and search for Media Servers. It DOES find the server on machine A, but when you connect, you cannot download the library.

What is displayed in the status portion of Media Server when you do this?

j

LisaRCT · « **Reply #11 on:** October 30, 2003, 01:48:35 pm »

Quote from: John Gateley on October 30, 2003, 01:12:39 pm

What is displayed in the status portion of Media Server when you do this?

j

Confirmed

Here is the message qand error dialogs:

Media Server -- messagebox - window

03/16/03 14:43:16 - sharer starting
03/16/03 14:43:16 - Initializing server.
03/16/03 14:43:16 - Server initialized
03/16/03 14:43:16 - sharer ready to accept connections
03/16/03 14:43:18 - Started auto response thread on port 5556.
03/16/03 14:43:39 - received a connection
03/16/03 14:43:39 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 14:43:39 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 14:43:39 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 14:43:42 - received a connection
03/16/03 14:43:42 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 14:43:42 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 14:43:42 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 14:43:42 - received a connection
03/16/03 14:43:43 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 14:43:43 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 14:43:43 - request for library
03/16/03 14:45:00 - tcp_write failed error=10054
03/16/03 14:45:00 - sharing thread exiting

JRReader -- messagebox - window

Failed to connect to a server
Reason: the request has timed out
URL: http:\\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:81/GetLibrary

Information -- messagebox - window

Failed to download Media Library

?

John Gateley · « **Reply #12 on:** October 30, 2003, 02:20:40 pm »

You have a large library, right? (Lot's of liner notes or something?)

Try this: make a small library with 10 files or so, and share that.

I'm wondering if it is taking too long to zip up the library and that is why the connection times out...

j

kwake · « **Reply #13 on:** October 30, 2003, 02:43:17 pm »

Hmm, this is strange...I saw your suggestion John to Lisa to try serving and connecting using the same machine - I didn't think that could be possible using one instance of Media Center.

Anyway, I tried it and still can't connect, even with my firewall (Zone Labs Integrity Desktop) turned off (not just disabled, off).

Am I right having tried running Media Server (on port 81 with no errors), and then go into Media Center and selecting File/Library/Search for Media Servers?

Because if I do this, it almost immediately pops a dialog saying: "Failed to find local media server".

Sorry if I'm way off - I've read the help docs but I just don't seem to be getting it.

Thanks,
Kwake

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** October 30, 2003, 03:02:22 pm »

Quote from: kwake on October 30, 2003, 02:43:17 pm

Anyway, I tried it and still can't connect, even with my firewall (Zone Labs Integrity Desktop) turned off (not just disabled, off).

Some firewalls need to be uninstalled to be "off". In other words, "off" or "disabled" won't work (a bug).

LisaRCT · « **Reply #15 on:** October 30, 2003, 03:16:50 pm »

that did the trick . . approximately 150 songs in this library
Machine A to Machine A logs below:

NOTE: still cannot connect to Machine A's MediaServer with Machine B . . . . get the same failed to downlad library errors.

03/16/03 16:16:52 - sharer starting
03/16/03 16:16:52 - Initializing server.
03/16/03 16:16:53 - Server initialized
03/16/03 16:16:53 - sharer ready to accept connections
03/16/03 16:16:53 - Started auto response thread on port 5556.
03/16/03 16:17:04 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:04 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:04 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:04 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 16:17:04 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 16:17:06 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:06 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:07 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:07 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 16:17:07 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 16:17:07 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:07 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:07 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:07 - request for library
03/16/03 16:17:08 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 16:17:27 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:28 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:28 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:28 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 16:17:28 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 16:17:30 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:30 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:30 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:30 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 16:17:30 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:30 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:30 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:30 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 16:17:30 - streaming 7 F:/Music/Tori Amos/The Best Of Tori Amos/folder.jpg
03/16/03 16:17:30 - streaming done
03/16/03 16:17:30 - sharing thread exiting
03/16/03 16:17:37 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:37 - Current Connections: 1
03/16/03 16:17:37 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:37 - received a connection
03/16/03 16:17:37 - streaming 8 F:/Music/Tori Amos/The Best Of Tori Amos/Tori Amos - The Best Of Tori Amos - 1952 - Danny Boy.mp3
03/16/03 16:17:37 - Current Connections: 2
03/16/03 16:17:37 - ready for another connection
03/16/03 16:17:37 - sharing thread started
03/16/03 16:17:37 - streaming 9 F:/Music/Tori Amos/The Best Of Tori Amos/folder.jpg
03/16/03 16:17:37 - streaming done
03/16/03 16:17:38 - sharing thread exiting

LisaRCT · « **Reply #16 on:** October 30, 2003, 04:00:09 pm »

BTW, I tried to connect by specifying the network address in the library manager , but this too was unsucessful: failed to load.

John Gateley · « **Reply #17 on:** October 30, 2003, 04:04:11 pm »

Hi LisaRCT,

It's the size of your DB that's causing the timeout. Until 9.2, there's a couple of workarounds: get a faster CPU (do the compression faster) or create a copy of your database with the bios and lyrics stripped out just for serving.

Connecting from B to A should work when A is sharing a small library.

j

JimH · « **Reply #18 on:** October 30, 2003, 04:06:22 pm »

Or you could create a second library, import everything, then delete entries you didn't need. Then tell Media Server to share that library.

kwake · « **Reply #19 on:** October 30, 2003, 05:05:53 pm »

It seems a bit unsafe (and unwise) to uninstall my Firewall software... are there many (any) people in this newsgroup that don't have a firewall installed and running?

It would be great if anyone who has been successful in getting Media Server to work with Zone Alarm (or any other software firewall) installed and doing it's thing to post a reply with tips/tricks...

Thanks,
Kwake

JimH · « **Reply #20 on:** October 30, 2003, 05:53:47 pm »

Just as a test, and disconnect from the Internet.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #21 on:** October 30, 2003, 06:24:34 pm »

Quote from: John Gateley on October 30, 2003, 04:04:11 pm

Hi LisaRCT,

It's the size of your DB that's causing the timeout. Until 9.2, there's a couple of workarounds: get a faster CPU (do the compression faster) or create a copy of your database with the bios and lyrics stripped out just for serving.

Connecting from B to A should work when A is sharing a small library.
j

Well, I did strip all the bios and lyrics out of my files and library since they were blamed for the lag problems recently experienced . . . . so that is no longer a factor.

Second, I tried sharing a lbrary of 150 files and failed so I cannot see the library size being the main issue.

Yes, I do have a slow processor on the MEdia Server PC (550 mhz, which is more than adequate for my other server needs) so for now I may need to just map the drive that is in Machine A so it appears as a local drive on Machine B, and run it that way instead.

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #22 on:** October 30, 2003, 07:16:30 pm »

I currently serve up around 13000 VBR MP3s from my Media Server no problemo!

The server is an AMD 1.4Ghz, with 384Mb of RAM, MP3 library sits on 4 X 80Gb RAID array. I have quite a few lyrics added, but very little in the way of comments/bios etc.

When the client downloads the library from the server, it is about 1.3Mb in size.

A thought just occurred to me! Can you try hard setting the ethernet card's properties so instead of Auto-Negotiate, it is set to 100Mb-FDX (that is if you have a 100Mb switch/hub) ? The other day I installed a new machine for my brother, and tried to copy some MP3's (about 150Mb) from my media server, to his new PC. I found that it was as slow as a wet wig (said it would take 25 minutes to copy the files), so I hard set the NIC on my server and his PC to 100Mb/FDX. It still didn't work real well, so I swicthed it off on his end. Then the copy took about 12 seconds!!!

His PC had an Intel NIC (which I've found seem to prefer being set to Auto-Negotiate link speed/duplex), but my Media Server is (I think) a 3-Com, which I have always had trouble with Auto-Negotiate on.

Give it a try!

LisaRCT · « **Reply #23 on:** October 30, 2003, 07:20:38 pm »

Thanks Meat

I will take a look at that . . . and I do have a few extra NIC cards lying about so I can try another.

JimH · « **Reply #24 on:** October 30, 2003, 07:41:20 pm »

Lunch,
I've seen exactly the same problem several times. Thanks for posting this.

Jim

Uwe · « **Reply #25 on:** October 31, 2003, 02:30:40 am »

Hi Lisa,

i think that could be the same Problem I had in October. Check it out:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=15993

It sounds nearly the same...
Good luck !
Uwe

LisaRCT · « **Reply #26 on:** October 31, 2003, 09:52:33 am »

Thanks Uwe

I will try some of the suggestions on that thread.

John Gateley · « **Reply #27 on:** October 31, 2003, 11:11:20 am »

Let me know how it works. I thought you still had the liner notes intact...

j

LisaRCT · « **Reply #28 on:** October 31, 2003, 12:13:14 pm »

Quote from: John Gateley on October 31, 2003, 11:11:20 am

Let me know how it works. I thought you still had the liner notes intact...
j

OK will do.
When we found that all that extraneous data was a contributor to the lag problem a short while back I decided it was not worth the cost to keep it so it was all removed.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Media Server connection problems (Read 4384 times)

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT