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[masterjoe]

Well, this is really something that prevents me from being totally happy with MC
Everything is great but one thing: MC crashes very often with my setup BEFORE I actually can watch something.
My setup is the following:

- Synology NAS over Gigabit LAN; 3 USB disks attached with media files on them
- Intel Core i5 HTPC with MC20 installed; it accesses the 3 USB disks on the Synology using UNC paths

When I start MC in Theater View I see the main page. Then when I havigate to the default view "Disk" and try to open it MC crashes the first time.
I have to retry this up to three times before actually going INSIDE "Disk"... meachwhile MC Client crashes multiple times.
When inside "Disk" I see my three USB disks - but when I enter one of these it might happens once or more time that MC crashes.
After sevceral tries I may enter one of the disks. At this point I then can navigate the folder structure of the disk without any further crashing and may then watch a movie or something. But before this point MC keeps crashing A LOT.

Why is MC crashing so often before it runs ok? Has it to do with the UNC paths? has it do do with the fact that the USB drives are not accessible instantly but after some time?

I need a solution for this so that NO CRASH occurs at any time browsing the library. Any help??

[JimH]

Does it happen if you use MC's normal navigation?  Just go to Video in Theater View, for example.

Does it happen if the media is on a local drive?  NAS drives don't always behave as expected.

Antivirus is also a possible source of the problem.

What build are you using?  20.0.132 is current.

[masterjoe]

I am using the latest build (132) but I can't use local drives as this is not possible here in my house. The NAS is mandatory!
All other clients using the NAS work fine. I can use these USB drives on any PC without any issues. Access rights and access is ok.

MC seems to be too impatient and this might lead to the observed crashing. It happens really often!

Can we figure out WHY it crashes? Crash logs etc? I want this to be sorted out!

Thx.

[JimH]

Testing local files might tell you whether the problem is related to the NAS.

USB drives aren't NAS drives.  A USB 3.0 drive may not work on USB 2.0 because of power needs.

We'll ask for a crash log if we need it.  You'll need to test with local files first.

[masterjoe]

Jim, if you would read my posts you would know that the USB drives ARE in fact NAS drives. See my initial post.
The USB drives are NOT connected to the server nor the client PC but to the Synonolgy NAS. Reading helps.

And even if the local files do work: I cannot attach them to the PC where the MC server runs!
There ARE already many USB devices attached.

The library is HUGE! How shall I quickly test if this works locally??

[masterjoe]

On the other hand: What test exactly do you think shall I make? Some synthetic test with a couple of files?

See: The server and the client run on the SAME machine. If playing back local files in this scenario won't work then everything would be broken. This is most likely not the case because SOMETIMES I can play back some files on the NAS drives.

I need the setup to work exactly as it is now. I can access the library files from a regular explorer on all three USB drives (@ Synology!) without any problems. Only MC seems to have issue accessing the files. Sometimes it CAN TAKE SOME TIME for the drives to wake up as the Synology sends them to sleep from time to time. The explorer has no problems with that (it just hangs for a while and then shows the files) but for me it seems MC has big problems with that! I suspect timeouts to occur which is not handled exception-wise!

So what next? If you want me to do a local test: tell me HOW to test this. My time does not grow on trees. I need a working solution.

[masterjoe]

Made another test with a SECOND machine.

So now I have:
(1) Synology NAS with 3 USB disks as network shares
(2) PC with Win 8.1 x64 which runs MC server and client at the same time; the server uses lots of files from the USB drive shares
(3) PC with Win 8.1 x64 which runs MC client to connect to the library on (2)

While (2) constantly crashes when accessing the default view "Disk", the second computer (3) has NO PROBLEMS accessing all the files doing it the same way?!
I repeated the steps multiple times. On PC (2) the MC client crashes and crashes while on PC (3) the MC client browses through the SAME library like a charm!?

What could be the problem?

[masterjoe]

Btw: I found out that BOTH the client and the server crash when browsing on the "server" machine (2)?!

When I use a different client PC as the server then both the server and the client work fine.
So running the server and the client on the same machine does lead to these crashes?! What?!

Could it be that MC server and MC client collide when being executed on the same machine because MC client uses the SAME library files?!

But I want the server to always run while the GUI shall only run on demand on the server...

[masterjoe]

In order to be sure that the client on the server machine connects to the server in the same way other PCs do I have tried to use the share key in MC client but this leads to an immediate crash!
(And therefore is an obvious bug!)

Somehow it seems to be impossible to run the MC server and the MC client on the same machine as independent instances??

Btw: I start the MC server MANUALLY and not by starting it with windows automatically. Because I have a monitoring app that unattendedly relaunches the server in case of a crash.
Is this maybe different to automatically launching the server part? And may this be the reason why the client on the server keeps crashing?

The bad news is that my "server" is my main media station connected to 3 TV sets... It MUST work there.

Any help appreciated...

[blgentry]

I don't know much about the Client Server aspects of Media Network with MC.  I suspect that running both on one machine was not intended, but I don't know.  I do know that there is a forum here explicitly for Media Network though.  Maybe you'd get better advice posting there?

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=7.0

Brian.

[JimH]

You should be able to run both on one machine, but I can't think of a good reason to do so.

[JimH]

Jim, if you would read my posts you would know that the USB drives ARE in fact NAS drives. See my initial post.
The USB drives are NOT connected to the server nor the client PC but to the Synonolgy NAS. Reading helps.

I don't read every post every time I answer, and there are more than a few here to answer.

A USB drive is not a NAS drive, even if it's connected to a NAS device.  And the power considerations still matter.

Test local files if you haven't.

[JimH]

Somehow it seems to be impossible to run the MC server and the MC client on the same machine as independent instances??

Why are you trying to do this?  Please explain.

[masterjoe]

Why are you trying to do this?  Please explain.

Because the computer on which MC runs is a server kind of computer. The server part shall run non-stop but the GUI shall only run on demand - as this computer is also used as media player from time to time.
As a SW developer I believe in the separation of core functionality and GUI - this is why I want a headless server plus client GUI. MC seems to offer this but on the same machine it just won't work and leads to many many crashes.

Meanwhile I tried to let MC run alone (one instance) in "combined" server / client mode on the server. But the results are exactly the same:

- Browsing the library on the server leads to crashing MC reproducibly. When using the "Disk" view it happens with a 100% chance!
  And by crashing I mean: The application just hangs for a while and then disappears completely.

- When browsing the server's library on another PC in the network then suddenly everything works totally flawlessly - exactly as I would expect this on the server, too.
  But why the heck can a second computer browse the SAME library using the SAME server's MC better than browsing it on the server itself?!

I have no clue how to solve the problem as there is nothing more I can do...

[JimH]

If the server is running all the time, that is Media Center.  You could read about it on the wiki in the Media Server topic.  When you then start Media Center by clicking on the icon, you're still running that copy.

We're not going to try to support the use case you're proposing.  It doesn't do anything that MC by itself doesn't do.

It's possible that the crash you're reporting may be related to firewall or two applications opening the same socket.

But end of story on this.  Sorry.

[masterjoe]

End of story? And you mean that this is all you have to say?

What about:

- telling me some ways to FIND the issue like checking crash logs etc.
- try this and that in MC to see if it's getting better

Now with the last scenario MC runs "normally" and with no special use case. However the library cannot be browsed on the server but on a second computer connecting to the server!

So how can it be a firewall problem when the server itself just doesn't need the network while the second computer needs it and it WORKS there?

The strange part of this all is that browsing the library just works across the network but not on the machine where the server runs!

[masterjoe]

I run MC 20 (build 132) on a Win 8.1 Pro x64 machine which shall be called the "server".
There is another Windows machine on the same LAN which I will refer to as the "client" running the same version of MC 20.

The 7TB library is reached in form of several network shares on three USB disks attached to a Synology NAS on the same LAN.
All three systems are using the same network switch to communicate.

Now the following strange behaviour is observed:

- browsing the MC library on the server itself leads to crashing MC reproducibly especially using the view "Disk"; MC hangs and then disappears without any further notice
- browsing the MC library on the client (connecting to the server library remotely) across the network works perfectly (and is fast) even using the view "Disk"

Why does browsing the library across the network on the client PC work
while browsing the same library on the server crashes MC very reproducibly?

How can the issue be found and solved? Thanks.

[JimH]

We aren't going to spend more time on this now.  I don't believe it is an MC problem.