Minimserver slow to appear as a music source

[gbrist]

Just have a question regarding the time it takes for MinimServer to appear as a music source on my music apps after a reboot of my NAS.
As my NAS is set to power up at a time in the morning.
Asset appears (two instances) is much faster to appear than MinimServer.
MinimServer can take well over 30mins to appear. (Sometimes longer)
Was wondering if this is because I am using the free version or just its normal operation?
The docker instance takes a little longer.
I'd rather use MinimServer but sometimes I can't wait for it to appear before I want to play something
Or maybe because I am running both Asset and MinimServer?
If I did just run MinimServer what is a rough time you should expect before it would appear on the UPnP/DLNA source?
NAS is a DS218+ or DS220+
Thanks

[simoncn]

I tried this on my Synology DS713+ running DSM 7.1. From the time of the the "system ready" beep, Asset was visible immediately and MinimServer was visible after 7 seconds.

This was with a small test library. The delay would be a bit longer with a large library because Miniserver does a library scan before advertising itself to control points. To reduce this startup time, you can set the startupScan property to false.

A delay of about 30 minutes suggests that there is some configuration issue with your network or your NAS that is blocking UPnP "alive" notifications sent by MinimServer. In the UPnP protocol, the server sends "alive" messages at least once every 30 minutes and the control point (music app) sends M-SEARCH messages at least once every 30 minutes. If the "alive" messages are blocked for some reason, the control point won't discover MinimServer until the control point next sends an M-SEARCH message.

Asset sends "alive" messages much more frequently than the UPnP protocol requires (once every 60 seconds). If for some reason your network is blocking the initial "alive" messages sent by both Asset and MinimServer, Asset would make another attempt after one minute but MinimServer would not do this until almost 30 minutes later. This interval is determined by the ohNet network stack that MinimServer uses for UPnP communications. The ohNet stack doesn't provide any way to change this interval because the ohNet developers don't think "flooding" the network in this way is a good idea.

Are you running the Synology firewall? If so, please try disabling this as a test to see if it makes any difference. Also, does your router do IGMP snooping? If so, this might be blocking "alive" notifications from MinimServer. What router make and model do you have? Does the router configuration allow IGMP snooping to be disabled?

[gbrist]

(08-10-2022 10:19)simoncn Wrote:  I tried this on my Synology DS713+ running DSM 7.1. From the time of the the "system ready" beep, Asset was visible immediately and MinimServer was visible after 7 seconds.

This was with a small test library. The delay would be a bit longer with a large library because Miniserver does a library scan before advertising itself to control points. To reduce this startup time, you can set the startupScan property to false.

A delay of about 30 minutes suggests that there is some configuration issue with your network or your NAS that is blocking UPnP "alive" notifications sent by MinimServer. In the UPnP protocol, the server sends "alive" messages at least once every 30 minutes and the control point (music app) sends M-SEARCH messages at least once every 30 minutes. If the "alive" messages are blocked for some reason, the control point won't discover MinimServer until the control point next sends an M-SEARCH message.

Asset sends "alive" messages much more frequently than the UPnP protocol requires (once every 60 seconds). If for some reason your network is blocking the initial "alive" messages sent by both Asset and MinimServer, Asset would make another attempt after one minute but MinimServer would not do this until almost 30 minutes later. This interval is determined by the ohNet network stack that MinimServer uses for UPnP communications. The ohNet stack doesn't provide any way to change this interval because the ohNet developers don't think "flooding" the network in this way is a good idea.

Are you running the Synology firewall? If so, please try disabling this as a test to see if it makes any difference. Also, does your router do IGMP snooping? If so, this might be blocking "alive" notifications from MinimServer. What router make and model do you have? Does the router configuration allow IGMP snooping to be disabled?

Thanks for your detailed response...
I do have a large library >120000 tracks.. so the rescanning obviously would take time.
My router is a Telco router: Technicolor DJA0231 and I cannot see anyway to change or even view IGMP settings.
Disabling Synology f/w was not really any change.
So I am guessing the only way to be able to change the startupscan parameters in MinimServer is by getting the licenced version?
What is the downside of having startupscan set to false?
Or I could / should just be more patient
One other question.. Is the licenced version as easy to configure and navigate as say Asset (for us novices )?

[simoncn]

You don't need a full license to change the startupScan property. You need to install MinimWatch on another computer on your network (see this page) and select Properties from the minim icon, then select the Advanced tab.

I don't think rescanning would take 30 minutes for your library, only a few minutes. A delay of 30 minutes seems much more likely to be caused by a network discovery problem.

The full licensed version is not currently as easy to configure as Asset for a novice user. I am working on some changes that will improve this.

See this post for details of how to disable IGMP snooping on a different Technicolor router. I don't know if this will work for your router.

For a possible workaround, you could try restarting your control point after about 5 or 10 minutes to see if it can find MinimServer then.