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[Marquis]

Hi Guys,

since this is my very first post in this forum, I would like to introduce myself first. I live in Germany and I am addicted to MC since V11.0. I am impressed by the power of this application, even if I step by step find some weakness inside. I am using an iPod Video and I am using several PCs with one central network share for music.

Now I would like to ask your support with this issue:
I am using Windows Server 2003, because I have my own servers for ftp, www and mail running. Of cause it's also my fileserver for my other PCs in the house. While I was using network shares to access my movies and music files I decided to run library server on my Win2003 also. That's why I bought "FireDaemon", a cool software that allows to run any application as a service. I installed MC11.1 on all computers and installed the MC11.exe in system32 as a service.

For a few weeks this worked out fantastic. The server was up and running and after a restart of Win2003 the service was started again. All my clients had connected to the server without a problem. BUT since one week the clients can not find the server anymore. Even if I hardcode the port on library server and the clients they are not able to find each other.

If I logon to my Win2003 and start MC11 the server inside MC is started probably and my clients will connect again.

I haven't changed anything, tried to re-install MC11, FireDaemon and even installed the latest beta-release.

Any ideas?

cu
  Marquis

[John Gateley]

Hi Marquis,

Sounds like a firewall problem, did you change your network security or configuration recently?

On the server machine, do a netstat -an and make sure that the port is being listened on.

On a client machine in a web browser, enter

http://10.0.0.1:1025/GetVersion

and see if that gives any clues what is happening.

j

[zxsix]

I'd look at the account that the service is starting under.
If you normally log in as BOB and configure Media Center's settings, then start the service using the default SYSTEM account, you won't have the same settings in MC, as they are stored on a per-user profile basis.

If you can start MC manually while logged in as BOB and everything works, and you have the firedaemon service using BOB for the authentication, then it should work fine too.

You can also temporarily check the box in the service for "interact with desktop".  Then you can start the service and check your port and other settings for the library server options in MC.

[Marquis]

John,

I don't think that it is a firewall problem, because inside my LAN the firewall is open and it worked before. It seems like MC11.exe is no longer started as a service, because if I start MC11 while beeing loged on the port is reachable for the clients.

zxsix,
Yes, I have tried this already... but without luck 
BTW: Interact with Desktop does not show any window or icon on the tray. I only see in taskmanager that mediacenter is running.


cu
  Marquis

[zxsix]

Interact with desktop should allow MC's interface to be displayed.
Log in to the computer.  Stop the service manually.
Make sure interact with desktop is checked.
Restart the service manually.
The key here is to have the desktop running prior to the service starting.
Once you can see the interface while it's running as a service, then you can check the settings within that instance.


The easiest way is to do like I do and run the service with the credentials that you normally log in to your desktop with instead of the default LocalSystem account.
That way you know it's using the same registry settings as when you log in interactively.

[Marquis]

Hi,

I tried to stop the service, reconfigure the "interact" setting and start again. But nothing happens. There is no interface or icon in the tray shown. FireDaemon says the service is running.

cu
  Marquis

[zxsix]

Same here,  I get no indication in the tray that MC is running, but I can see the process running in task manager and my UPNP clients and remote MC can connect via Library Server.

MC will be using the settings from the registry of the logged in user.  Make sure that the service is using your normal login account and not LocalSystem.

[dlone]

Please note, if you run this using the system account, network access is disabled

You've got a choice of
1) system acount, interact with desktop, no networking (legacy option - not supported for future versions of windows)
2) pick a user account to run under - allows networks etc, but no user display

To run a program as a service, the program shoud really have a service that does the work and a gui that runs seperately using the current user profile

MC does not run like this, and trying to force it will cause problems

Ideally (according to MSoft documentation) , the media server parts of MC should be removed from the main program - but that's probably too much work

[Marquis]

I think I got closer to the problem.

After deleting the service, restart the server, setup the service again the library server is running. Everything works fine until I log in to the system and start MC11 to administrate the database. After that the service will not work and I have to start again.

Because clients can not maintain the database I have to log in often and that will kill the service.

I think I will give up the service-idea and will open the database from each client directly over network drives.

cu
  Marquis

[Alex B]

I think I will give up the service-idea and will open the database from each client directly over network drives.

Just don't open the same database simultaneously. It'll be corrupted.


Edit

More info:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=29585.msg204021#msg204021
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=26442.0 (glynor's link to this thread is below)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=32484.0

[glynor]

You may want to take a look at my comments (and others of course) on this thread (make sure to keep reading down, I did actually post a copy of my scripts).  I have a number of machines that all share one library, but you are able to update tags and the like from any of the machines using a script mechanism.

Using a combination of my script method, and your library server with service method might be perfect for you.

I envision:

1. Windows2003 server runs MC as service (as you had it before).
2. "Client" machines access MC "server" normally.
3. When you want to update the database (tagging and whatnot) you use a modified version of my script to pull the current "Windows2003 database" down to one of your local machines.  Switch on that machine from using the Media Server to using the local database.  Do your changes there.  Then use my "publish local to shared" script to copy that local copy back onto the server.
4. Reboot Windows2003 machine and you should have up-to-date library on all your machines auto-magically.

[Marquis]

Hi thanks for the warning and your links... So I'll have to investigate how to share libraries manually.

Is it planned for MC11.x oder MC12 to improve library share functions? Would be great, because I see that I am not the only one with this problems.

Thanks so far...
  Marquis

[glynor]

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=32484.0

Never saw that last thread you linked Alex.  That's a good explanation!  (Though I do like using xcopy's exclude option to keep the Cache folder from copying).

Good stuff!