Can no longer find dlna server after upgrade from 15.10 to 16.04

[Jamie Strandboge]

From irc:
08:28 < jdstrand> Laney: question for you-- just otoh, can you think of a reason why dlna wouldn't work on xenial in rhythmbox any more when it has the same upstream version as wily (and the Ubuntu delta didn't have any relevant changes), grilo is the same as wily and grilo-plugins only has one irrelevant change over wily?
08:29 < jdstrand> (it the dleyna code in grilo that handles this afaik)
08:30 < jdstrand> Laney: the dlna server just doesn't show up any more (but daap still does)
08:33 < jdstrand> I have both forked-daapd and minidlna exporting <music>
08:33 < jdstrand> and rhythmbox used to see both on wily. on xenial, it only sees daap

This may be a bug in grilo or grilo-plugins since, AIUI, it is the dleyna code in grilo-plugins that handles this. It appears that grilo relies on dleyna-server and dleyna-server isn't able to find the server any more. I tried on a separate wily install and it wasn't able to find it.

Coming up with a reproducer was more difficult than I thought it would be.

1. minidlna server setup
$ sudo apt-get install minidlna

Adjust /etc/minidlna.conf to have:
media_dir=A,/path/to/some/music/files

I believe everything else can be left as defaults.

2. rhythmbox setup
$ sudo apt-get install grilo-plugins-0.2-extra rhythmbox-plugins dleyna-server

stop and start rhythmbox

go into Tools/Plugins and check Grilo media browser

This was all I needed to do initially for it to start working. Now it now longer works. Android devices and 'kodi' from Ubuntu can find and use it fine. Using d-feet and going to 'com.intel.dleyna-server' and into com.intel.dLeynaServer.Manager and looking at 'GetServers' returns nothing. Looking at Rescan() triggers traffic (as seen with tcpcump) with the server (ie, there are responses). Looking at an strace of /usr/lib/dleyna-server/dleyna-server-service shows it got a response from the minidlna server. I guess the problem is in dleyna-server. There is a new upstream version (0.5), but it is newer than what is in Debian.

Apparently minidlna is installed in Netgear devices and other places and is quite popular.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I looked a bit at the issue today, some data points

- it works in a guest session

- it doesn't work with a existing/new user(?)

- it's not an issue with rhythmbox, rhythmbox doesn't list the share either, nor does the grilo-test-ui utility (need to rebuild grilo to try this one)

- the dleyna 0.5 update doesn't fix it

I'm unsure why it works in a guest session, maybe some features get turned off due to the restricted permissions and the remaining ones are working...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

gupnp-av-cp has the same issue (and works as well in a guest session) ... unsure what's going on there

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the issue was with gssdp and the difference in guest was probably just random timing one

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gssdp - 0.14.14-1ubuntu1

---------------
gssdp (0.14.14-1ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Resynchronize on Debian, remaining change
    - multiarchify the library packages
    includes fix for dlna servers (lp: #1536208)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Tue, 23 Feb 2016 10:53:18 +0100

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

I can confirm this is fixed on up to date xenial. Thanks! :)