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simbun · (This post was last modified: 29-03-2021 18:01 by simbun.)

(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: Thanks for the tips
I like the idea of having a master copy backed up and synced - it doesn't make sense to only have one copy on the nas. If I lose that, will be bad.

I don't know what NAS you have, but if it just offers redundancy (RAID) then that's not a backup at all, what if you accidentally delete a folder or another malicious process does, redundancy isn't going to help you there as it'll just be mirrored across :-)
Unfortunately I'm still on Windows 10 so don't have the option of using ZFS or something similar, so once every 6 months I MD5 the files, and compare them with the previous run just to make sure nothing has gone awry (bit rot e.t.c.). Then I just sync across the new files to my backup server and the Pi.

(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: I attached a basic layout of the network. Each colour is a different subnet/vlan. Grey is trunk and they are all isolated unless I've set specific rules for something I need.

Wow you've gone very granular, I resisted the urge to split it out too much and just have:

Code:

Management - networking equipment

Home       - any computing device that get's updated regularly by me

IoT        - google homes and philips hue hub

CCTV

Guest

(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: Can I ask a question about minimserver.
What does it actually do? does it manage the music library in anyway? like will the file structure be changed/reorganised? Or the meta data changed in any way? Is it purely how it is presented/searched?

MinimServer doesn't touch your music at all, it's just a presentation layer (it's not JUST that but that's 80% of it). If you don't have a DLNA/UPnP server for your music then you can only browse by folder; if you know where everything is then that's fine, but if you're in the mood for some Reggae, or want to look at all the songs from a particular artist, be them on their own album or from a compilation then that's not really possible.
Where MinimServer excells over other servers is the configurability. It makes it possible to surface ALL the tags in your metadata and manipulate them so you can display them in your control point of choice e.g. BubbleUPnP doesn't display release date AND original date of release, so I can manipulate the album tag (all within MimimServer so it's not affecting your real music) to add $ORIGINALDATE$ to the album name e.t.c.
The other benefit is the "intelligent browsing" which basically means you can look at any of your category tags (which you choose to filter by) in any order you want, and it only shows the one's that are still applicable.
If you have a decent, clean set of tags it's worth a play as you can get a 30 day trial.

(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: I'm just thinking that if the music directory is in a good state, nicely organised and meta data all accurate, I think I could just settle with an nfs share for volumio and use firewall rules to allow my mobile to have a http connection to the volumio and control it that way. Seems like a lot less work although will that mean I'll need to have volumio specific playlists created?
I'm hoping that can be something common at some point

As you say, anything that isn't in your tags will be siloed if you have devices on each vlan.
Could you not have a vlan that had all your music devices and servers on and a single control point?
EDIT: Given you've already got MinimServer and BubbleUPnP server on the NAS it would just need to be the streamers and UPnP speakers with a control point.

Neo · 29-03-2021, 18:02

(29-03-2021 16:26)simbun Wrote:
(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: Thanks for the tips
I like the idea of having a master copy backed up and synced - it doesn't make sense to only have one copy on the nas. If I lose that, will be bad.
I don't know what NAS you have, but if it just offers redundancy (RAID) then that's not a backup at all, what if you accidentally delete a folder or another malicious process does, redundancy isn't going to help you there as it'll just be mirrored across :-)
Unfortunately I'm still on Windows 10 so don't have the option of using ZFS or something similar, so once every 6 months I MD5 the files, and compare them with the previous run just to make sure nothing has gone awry (bit rot e.t.c.). Then I just sync across the new files to my backup server and the Pi.

I don't have another server to back to. But I have a few spare internal hardrives - i can use a usb-sata connector, power them up, backup and stick em back in storage. It'll have to do for now. I'm trying not to buy any more goodies.
I still have one windows device in the house running 10. I thought it might be prudent seeing as I'm doing searches most of the time to work out what the hell I'm doing on Linux lol - it's the backup in case I break it all xD

(29-03-2021 16:26)simbun Wrote:
(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: I attached a basic layout of the network. Each colour is a different subnet/vlan. Grey is trunk and they are all isolated unless I've set specific rules for something I need.
Wow you've gone very granular, I resisted the urge to split it out too much and just have:

Code:

Management - networking equipment Home - any computing device that get's updated regularly by me IoT - google homes and philips hue hub CCTV Guest

It used to be all on one LAN lol. Oh happy simpler times.
I think you've done something similar, maybe I've gone a step further. Once the rules are setup, it functions really well and the switch ports can be allocated to any vlan.
The problem for me is the NAS being accessible externally.
It was going to be on a vlan with much more equipment, but as I planned all this rework, some choices were forced on me.
Burglar alarm had to be isolated for its own protection
IOT stuff had to be isolated. They can't really be configured and rarely get firmware updates.
Security doorbell + cameras had to be isolated.
Guest had to be isolated.
Network services (like switches) had to be isolated.
A lan for family mobile devices that can leave the house seemed sensible and then semi-smart devices like tvs or volumio (which isn't that secure) seemed to merit their own too... they most likely arent as problematic as the iot things, but I'm not sure I fully trust everything our smart tvs get up to.

(29-03-2021 16:26)simbun Wrote:
(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: Can I ask a question about minimserver.
What does it actually do? does it manage the music library in anyway? like will the file structure be changed/reorganised? Or the meta data changed in any way? Is it purely how it is presented/searched?
MinimServer doesn't touch your music at all, it's just a presentation layer (it's not JUST that but that's 80% of it). If you don't have a DLNA/UPnP server for your music then you can only browse by folder; if you know where everything is then that's fine, but if you're in the mood for some Reggae, or want to look at all the songs from a particular artist, be them on their own album or from a compilation then that's not really possible.
Where MinimServer excells over other servers is the configurability. It makes it possible to surface ALL the tags in your metadata and manipulate them so you can display them in your control point of choice e.g. BubbleUPnP doesn't display release date AND original date of release, so I can manipulate the album tag (all within MimimServer so it's not affecting your real music) to add $ORIGINALDATE$ to the album name e.t.c.
The other benefit is the "intelligent browsing" which basically means you can look at any of your category tags (which you choose to filter by) in any order you want, and it only shows the one's that are still applicable.
If you have a decent, clean set of tags it's worth a play as you can get a 30 day trial.

That clears alot up. Thanks. Just on the free trial right now, will upgrade when it expires. 1) for the extra functions and 2) as way of thanks to the work and provision of the software.

(29-03-2021 16:26)simbun Wrote:
(29-03-2021 14:27)Neo Wrote: I'm just thinking that if the music directory is in a good state, nicely organised and meta data all accurate, I think I could just settle with an nfs share for volumio and use firewall rules to allow my mobile to have a http connection to the volumio and control it that way. Seems like a lot less work although will that mean I'll need to have volumio specific playlists created?
I'm hoping that can be something common at some point
As you say, anything that isn't in your tags will be siloed if you have devices on each vlan.
Could you not have a vlan that had all your music devices and servers on and a single control point? Obviously this would only work if the switches are layer 3.

Yep I could. Or at the very least move the volumio to the NAS vlan.
It's just that my NAS is accessible from the internet and I feel that I need to exercise as much caution as possible.
Maybe when I can afford another NAS thats capable of HD streaming, I'll reconfigure the network so theres a media vlan and put all the devices together and then make the older NAS an external service only NAS and lock it down even more.

Neo · 30-03-2021, 14:00

So, attempts to get volumio working across subnets is with a mount and the volumio appears to struggle at times requiring a factory reset.
I know it's possibly not the best place to ask, but folks here seem knowledgeable and have possibly faced similar issues.

Is it better to make a copy of the music directory and mount that to volumio? I ask because my first few hours attempting to set the NFS mount up removed visibility of that folder within the Synology (It was there in the Control Panel > Shared Folder, but vanished from Filestation. It did this many times with all my mount attempts until I reset the volumio and then it did not happen anymore) I just wonder ... as Minimserver is using the music directory, is there a conflict when mounting that directory to something else maybe?
Ideally I'd like to just have one directory with a read only mount for volumio, but don't want a conflict or problems with Minimserver. Would it be better to have a copy directory and then make them sync up during the night?

For volumio - playlists. I thought that they are stored locally on the volumio device? Not in the NAS?

I'm not at the point yet to start making playlists but don't want to encounter an issue further down the road when I think the setup is working nicely and then there is a permission problem or something like that.

Is there any write access that volumio might need to the NAS? Does anyone know a good universal playlist editer/maker/converter?

simbun · 30-03-2021, 17:41

I'm not going to be able to answer the Volumio questions yet as I use it purely as a UPnP renderer, but I should be able to have a play tomorrow. I'm sure that Volumio will store any playlists within it's own config and not the music folders but I'll have a look tomorrow.
It sounds like your NFS troubles are with the NAS as well as Volumio, have you got it mounted on any other system?

MinimServer just needs read access to your music and it won't be causing any contention, unless for some reason Volumio needs to lock a file but I'm pretty sure that won't be the case.

If you're already using foobar just right click on one of the playlists and 'Save Playlist'. As long as you save it within the music directory or directly above it, it will use relative paths.

simbun · (This post was last modified: 31-03-2021 12:10 by simbun.)

Connecting Volumio to an NFS share on my Pi worked first time (once I'd finally realised that I'd set it up initially with access to just my PC!). Volumio also connects readonly to the share so that's fine.

Apart from the fact that you only get Artists, Albums and Genres it's actually better than I thought it'd be.
You have the ability to view by AlbumArtist OR Artist, which for me would be fine (as I use AlbumArtist 95% of the time) but would be a pain otherwise, but it does allow you to search for Artist if choosing to view by
AlbumArtist which is good.
It seems to pick up multiple Genre's too which is good.
It was painfully slow to index though, so it needs to be wired.

Playlists are stored on the device under /data/playlist although I think they're stored in the cloud if you have an account and I guess are shared between instances. It does look like it's in Volumios own format (so it can include songs in online services) though which is going to add some complexity (someone wrote a script in this post to convert them!)

Having said all that I think my expectations were really low as there are so many devices out there that have awful tagging support e.g. Sonos.

I think once you've gone MinimServer though, you won't go back :-)

Neo · 01-04-2021, 21:32

(31-03-2021 12:10)simbun Wrote: Connecting Volumio to an NFS share on my Pi worked first time (once I'd finally realised that I'd set it up initially with access to just my PC!). Volumio also connects readonly to the share so that's fine.

Apart from the fact that you only get Artists, Albums and Genres it's actually better than I thought it'd be.
You have the ability to view by AlbumArtist OR Artist, which for me would be fine (as I use AlbumArtist 95% of the time) but would be a pain otherwise, but it does allow you to search for Artist if choosing to view by
AlbumArtist which is good.
It seems to pick up multiple Genre's too which is good.
It was painfully slow to index though, so it needs to be wired.

Playlists are stored on the device under /data/playlist although I think they're stored in the cloud if you have an account and I guess are shared between instances. It does look like it's in Volumios own format (so it can include songs in online services) though which is going to add some complexity (someone wrote a script in this post to convert them!)

Having said all that I think my expectations were really low as there are so many devices out there that have awful tagging support e.g. Sonos.

I think once you've gone MinimServer though, you won't go back :-)

Sorry, I had to flatten my network. I noticed one device wasn't set to its allocated IP and no matter what I did it wouldn't change. Long story, but somehow its MAC address had changed while pretending to be the original MAC in my attached clients list.
It was in its own isolated LAN with nothing else and I can only speculate on the how or why, but couldn't take the risk of the rest of the network being compromised.
Had to rebuild and change everything and make a few improvements.

Thanks very much for checking. I think I'm stuck with NFS for the volumio. Its not going to be the main attraction in the house - that will get the minimserver treatment.
Apparently software like clementine can export playlists in .PLS format which Volumio can use. I'll check the link and be back when I've made more headway.

simbun · 06-04-2021, 10:56

(28-03-2021 12:10)bubbleguuum Wrote: BubbleUPnP Server allows you to access UPnP media servers running on network, from a different network, bypassing SSDP discovery which cannot be used in that scenario. Usually this is used for accessing your home LAN media servers from a different network across the Internet, but it should also work accross vlans on a home network. If BubbleUPnP Server detects MinimServer, simply connect (in Android BubbleUPnP) to BubbleUPnP Server's LAN ip address (assuming your Android device can reach BubbleUPnP Server).

Hi @bubbleguuum,

I'm not sure if you'll see this here, if not I may try the BubbleUPnP support routes.

Whilst this works great, for LAN isolation purposes what would be really impressive was if the BubbleUPnP app could not only access the proxied servers, but also the proxied renderers :-)
This way I could have MinimServer, BubbleUPnP server and all the UPnP renderers on a media vlan and use BubbleUPnP app on a phone/tablet from a "secure" vlan to control them all.

I appreciate that this functionality is primarily for internet connectivity which would have no use for playing to other renderers, but I thought I'd mention it just in case it's trivial to implement, as it would save a lot of people a lot of headaches.

Thanks for such great products.

bubbleguuum · 06-04-2021, 14:51

(06-04-2021 10:56)simbun Wrote:
(28-03-2021 12:10)bubbleguuum Wrote: BubbleUPnP Server allows you to access UPnP media servers running on network, from a different network, bypassing SSDP discovery which cannot be used in that scenario. Usually this is used for accessing your home LAN media servers from a different network across the Internet, but it should also work accross vlans on a home network. If BubbleUPnP Server detects MinimServer, simply connect (in Android BubbleUPnP) to BubbleUPnP Server's LAN ip address (assuming your Android device can reach BubbleUPnP Server).

Hi @bubbleguuum,

I'm not sure if you'll see this here, if not I may try the BubbleUPnP support routes.

Whilst this works great, for LAN isolation purposes what would be really impressive was if the BubbleUPnP app could not only access the proxied servers, but also the proxied renderers :-)
This way I could have MinimServer, BubbleUPnP server and all the UPnP renderers on a media vlan and use BubbleUPnP app on a phone/tablet from a "secure" vlan to control them all.

I appreciate that this functionality is primarily for internet connectivity which would have no use for playing to other renderers, but I thought I'd mention it just in case it's trivial to implement, as it would save a lot of people a lot of headaches.

Thanks for such great products.

I understand your request but there is no plan for proxied renderers, and it is far from trivial !