Two near identical setups; one works, other doesn't

[nickc]

I'm baffled on two fronts:

1. Several weeks ago my aged QNAP TS-109 finally, partially, gave up the ghost. I can still access its samba shares on the network, but I can no longer log into the admin web interface and after a power restart I lost touch with the MinimServer+MinimStreamer app which had been happily running for months on end: its icon was no longer shown by MinimWatch on my linux desktop, it wasn't showing in BubbleUPnP or Volumio and without the admin interface I couldn't get to see the status of the MS app from within the TS-109. Then yesterday when I booted up my desktop suddenly the MS icon appeared again, nice and green, and I'm listening to BBC radio from it at this moment, rendered by Volumio on a Raspberry Pi. We did have a brief power cut yesterday, but we had a much longer one a fortnight ago and I've powered the TS-109 down and up again several times since it went down in hope of getting the admin interface back. I'm still without that access, but out of the blue MinimServer seems to have resurrected itself - I'm more than ever in awe of this amazing software!

2. Being back in touch with MinimServer I've been able to investigate the second thing that baffled me. I have another instance of MinimServer+MinimStreamer on a much more up-to-date QNAP HS-251+ in another room, so when the apps on the TS_109 went down I switched to that, or tried to, but found it wouldn't play my radio stream of choice, even though it had been fine the last time I used it (much less frequently for streaming on that setup) following help from Simon to get its settings right for play by Volumio. Being short of time at that point I resorted to using Volumio's own web radio sources rather than embark on further troubleshooting on Volumio and/or MinimServer. With the TS-109 setup now accessible, this morning I checked the system properties on both servers and changed the settings on the HS-251+ to match the TS-109 (a matter only of removing ffmpeg from the stream.converter field and *:wav from stream.transcode) but as I anticipated, this didn't resolve the problem. Next I checked the two playlists; they are identical: eg #EXTINF:-1,[R3;aac,48000] BBC Radio 3
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man..._three.mpd
Finally I checked the MinimServer log for each NAS. The last entry on the TS-109 (where streaming is working) is "MinimServer[QNAP-TS-109] is running". On the HS-251+ it is
"MinimServer[LandroNAP] is running
MinimStreamer: transcoding converter is 'ffmpeg'
MinimStreamer: no transcode setting is configured
MPEG-DASH: Buffer length exceeded: http://time.akamai.com/?iso
MPEG-DASH: Buffer length exceeded: http://time.akamai.com/?iso
MPEG-DASH: Buffer length exceeded: http://time.akamai.com/?iso
MPEG-DASH: Buffer length exceeded: http://time.akamai.com/?iso
MPEG-DASH: Buffer length exceeded: http://time.akamai.com/?iso
MPEG-DASH: Buffer length exceeded: http://time.akamai.com/?iso"
This alerted me to the fact that ffmpeg has reappeared in the stream.converter field, which reminded me of reading that MS will automatically search the system it's on to find a converter app, so presumably there's no way it's presence or absence would be causing my problem. (If anything, I'd expect its absence on the TS-109 to cause an issue.)
Volumio has an annoying habit of popping up error messages which then disappear before I get a chance to read them, but I did eventually catch this after repeated failed attempts to play from the HS-251+:
"Error
Failed to decode http://192.168.1.63:9790/minimstreamer/*...tream.aac; CURL failed: The requested URL returned error: 500 Internal Server Error"

So here I have what appear two identical setups of MinimServer/MinimStreamer on different QNAP NASs, one of which (on the older NAS!) plays fine through Volumio, the other of which doesn't. I'm flummoxed.

[simoncn]

Regarding 1, this sounds like a hardware issue (perhaps HDD file corruption). Definitely time to purchase a replacement NAS.

Regarding 2, this is working for me on my HS-251+ with the same settings as yours. Please try powering everything off and on again. After this, do you still experience the problem?

[nickc]

Quote:
Regarding 1, this sounds like a hardware issue (perhaps HDD file corruption). Definitely time to purchase a replacement NAS.

The HS-251+ *is* the replacement, but while the TS-109 kept going I've been reluctant just to ditch it!

Quote:Regarding 2, this is working for me on my HS-251+ with the same settings as yours. Please try powering everything off and on again. After this, do you still experience the problem?

Interesting. I've rebooted both the HS-251+ and Volumio several times over recent weeks to no avail. This morning I shut off power to both as well, but sadly the same error when they came back up. Very puzzling.

[simoncn]

Please create a debug log by doing the following:

1) In your control point, open the playlist containing the Radio 3 stream
2) From the minim icon, select 'Show log'
3) In the log window, change the logging level to Debug
4) Leave the log window open
5) Try to play the radio stream (once only), then wait 20 seconds
6) In the log window, click 'Save as' to save a log file
7) In the log window, change the logging level back to Info
8) Zip the log file and attach the zipped file to a post here

I will look at the log file and let you know what I find.

[nickc]

Thanks Simon. Zipped log file attached. (There's a lot of junk at the start, I'm afraid, as I've a lot of work still to do on my tagging!) I hope you can find a clue as to what's preventing this stream from playing.

[simoncn]

Thanks for this. MinimStreamer is requesting an accurate time from the URL http://time.akamai.com/?iso and this request is failing when sent by the HS-251+. This might be caused by a QTS setting on the HS-251+ that is blocking or interfering with the request, possibly a firewall or security filter of some kind. The log doesn't contain any information about the cause of the failure.

I will produce a test build of MinimServer that will write a log message showing the data that the URL is returning when this failure occurs. This data is likely to be an error message and it should provide a pointer to the cause of the problem. When the test build is available, I will send you a PM with details.

[nickc]

Thank you, Simon, that's very much appreciated. Your comment took me back to the HS-251+ settings because I have occasionally changed the region/time settings. I found it's currently not set to either sync with my pc or with an internet service and the time had lost nearly 10 minutes, so I updated it and set it to sync with the internet service, hoping that might possibly solve the problem and save you the trouble of making a test build, but sadly, after rebooting the HS-251+ I got exactly the same issue again. I'll await your PM.

[nickc]

Today's log file from Test build attached as zip file.

[nickc]

Solved! Feeling rather embarrassed, I should report for the benefit of others that this problem was caused by an oversight of mine, thankfully traced by Simon's indefatigable troubleshooting. Some weeks ago I had been trying out different VPNs and similar setups, one of which had been a service calling itself 'Unlocator' which worked by clients changing the default DNS servers on their machines. I must have tried it on the QNAP and then, when the free trial ran out, completely forgot about it and never changed the DNS settings back to default. Doh!! Simon's diagnostics found that MinimStreamer was failing to get an accurate time signal as it was being rebuffed by the no longer functioning (for my IP) Unlocator DNS servers. As soon as I made that change this morning, the music was happily playing again. Thank you again, Simon!