Firefly drops off network after a few hours

[cshelton]

I’d like to think I know a thing or two about unix and networks, but I’m at a loss to fix this. Here are the (I think) relevant points:

1. I have a network with a PC, a Kuro box (gentoo), and a Roku.
2. The Roku is the only thing on wireless (rested are wired)
3. If I start mt-dappd on the Kuro box everthing is fine, except…
4. After a few hours (like 2) mt-dappd no longer appears either on the Roku or on iTunes on the PC.
5. The Roku or iTunes will stop playing in the middle of a song when this happens.
6. It doesn’t seem to matter if either the Roku or iTunes were on or off when mt-dappd was started.
7. Running iTunes on the PC exhibits none of these problems. It stays up as long as necessary and the Roku can see it and play from it the entire time.
8. I’m running SVN 1450 (this also happened with 1376).

All of this would seem consistent with a firewall problem except that I’m not running a firewall on my router (or at least I really don’t think I am 🙂 ) and then I would expect the same problems with iTunes (although that may demonstrate my misunderstanding). It would also be consistent with a wireless problem, except that the same problem happens when going from mt-daapd on my Kuro to iTunes on my PC.

I can post the full log, but it is long. Here are the (I hope) relevant portions:

2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Firefly Version svn-1450: Starting with debuglevel 5
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Loaded plugin /usr/local/share/mt-daapd/plugins/rsp.so (rsp/svn-1450)
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): No ssc program specified for script transcoder.
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Error loading plugin /usr/local/share/mt-daapd/plugins/ssc-script.so: plugin declined to load
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Loaded plugin /usr/local/share/mt-daapd/plugins/out-daap.so (daap/svn-1450)
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Starting rendezvous daemon
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): SetupInterfaceList
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): mDNS_RegisterInterface: InterfaceID 10060088 192.168.0.7 not represented in list; marking active and retriggering queries
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Adding 10060098 localhost.local. (Addr) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Adding 10060344 7.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Not creating HINFO record: platform support layer provided no information
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): SetupOneInterface: eth0 192.168.0.7 Registered
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Starting signal handler
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004002): Signal handler started
2006-12-09 13:01:50 (00004000): Initializing database
2006-12-09 13:01:51 (00004000): SendQueries: Sending 1 Question 0 Answers 1 Update on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:01:51 (00004000): SendQueries: Sending 1 Question 0 Answers 1 Update on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:01:51 (00004000): HostNameCallback: localhost.local. (Addr) Name registered (0)
2006-12-09 13:01:51 (00004000): Announcing localhost.local. (Addr) 9
2006-12-09 13:01:51 (00004000): Announcing 7.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:01:51 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 2 Announcements, 0 Answers, 0 Additionals on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:01:52 (00004000): Announcing localhost.local. (Addr) 8
2006-12-09 13:01:52 (00004000): Announcing 7.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (PTR) 8
2006-12-09 13:01:52 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 2 Announcements, 0 Answers, 0 Additionals on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:01:54 (00004000): Announcing localhost.local. (Addr) 7
2006-12-09 13:01:54 (00004000): Announcing 7.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (PTR) 7
2006-12-09 13:01:54 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 2 Announcements, 0 Answers, 0 Additionals on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:01:58 (00004000): Announcing localhost.local. (Addr) 6
2006-12-09 13:01:58 (00004000): Announcing 7.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (PTR) 6
2006-12-09 13:01:58 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 2 Announcements, 0 Answers, 0 Additionals on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:02:06 (00004000): Announcing localhost.local. (Addr) 5
2006-12-09 13:02:06 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 2 Announcements, 0 Answers, 0 Additionals on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Starting web server from /usr/local/share/mt-daapd/admin-root on port 3689
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Listening on port 3689
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Starting server thread
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Registering rendezvous names
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10062D38 Kuro-Box._http._tcp.local. (SRV) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10062FE4 Kuro-Box._http._tcp.local. (TXT) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 100627E0_services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10062A8C _http._tcp.local. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10063910 Kuro-Box._daap._tcp.local. (SRV) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10063BBC Kuro-Box._daap._tcp.local. (TXT) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 100633B8 _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10063664 _daap._tcp.local. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 100644E8 Kuro-Box._rsp._tcp.local. (SRV) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10064794 Kuro-Box._rsp._tcp.local. (TXT) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 10063F90 _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Adding 1006423C _rsp._tcp.local. (PTR) to active record list
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Serving 6346 songs. Startup complete in 22 seconds
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): Rescanning database
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): SendQueries: Sending 3 Questions 0 Answers 3 Updates on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): SendQueries: Sending 3 Questions 0 Answers 3 Updates on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:02:12 (00004000): SendQueries: Sending 3 Questions 0 Answers 3 Updates on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): ServiceCallback: Kuro-Box._http._tcp.local. (SRV) Name Registered (0)
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): ServiceCallback: Kuro-Box._daap._tcp.local. (SRV) Name Registered (0)
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing Kuro-Box._http._tcp.local. (SRV) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing Kuro-Box._http._tcp.local. (TXT) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing _http._tcp.local. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing Kuro-Box._daap._tcp.local. (SRV) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing Kuro-Box._daap._tcp.local. (TXT) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing _daap._tcp.local. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing Kuro-Box._rsp._tcp.local. (SRV) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing Kuro-Box._rsp._tcp.local. (TXT) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): Announcing _rsp._tcp.local. (PTR) 9
2006-12-09 13:02:13 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 12 Announcements, 1 Answer, 0 Additionals on 10060088

It then continues like this “announcing” for a few more seconds and then starts streaming music:

2006-12-09 13:06:38 (00030004): Session 0: Streaming file ’14 Wiegenlied 2.m4a’ to 192.168.0.6 (offset 0)
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): Announcing _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) 0
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): Announcing _http._tcp.local. (PTR) 0
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): Announcing _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) 0
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): Announcing _daap._tcp.local. (PTR) 0
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): Announcing _services._dns-sd._udp.local. (PTR) 0
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): Announcing _rsp._tcp.local. (PTR) 0
2006-12-09 13:09:40 (00004000): SendResponses: Sending 0 Deregistrations, 6 Announcements, 0 Answers, 0 Additionals on 10060088
2006-12-09 13:10:55 (00030004): Finished streaming file to remote: 6188953 bytes
2006-12-09 13:10:56 (00038004): Session 0: Streaming file ‘1-10 Sleighride.m4a’ to 192.168.0.6 (offset 0)
2006-12-09 13:14:08 (00038004): Finished streaming file to remote: 4652689 bytes

and that continues for almost two hours and then…

2006-12-09 15:06:24 (001b8004): Session 0: Streaming file ’11 Dave’s True Story _ Winter Wonder.mp3′ to 192.168.0.6 (offset 0)
2006-12-09 15:09:08 (001b8004): Finished streaming file to remote: 3950678 bytes
2006-12-09 15:09:09 (001c0004): Session 0: Streaming file ‘5-01 Sinfonia from _Christmas Orator.m4a’ to 192.168.0.6 (offset 0)
2006-12-09 15:09:11 (001c0004): Write error: Broken pipe
2006-12-09 15:09:11 (001c0004): Finished streaming file to remote: 90112 bytes
2006-12-09 15:09:11 (001c4004): Session 0: Streaming file ‘5-01 Sinfonia from _Christmas Orator.m4a’ to 192.168.0.6 (offset 70698)
2006-12-09 15:09:11 (001c4004): Seeking to offset 70698
2006-12-09 15:10:36 (001c4004): Write error: Broken pipe
2006-12-09 15:10:36 (001c4004): Finished streaming file to remote: 1974272 bytes

If anyone has an idea, I would be glad to hear it. Many thanks.

-Christian

[rpedde]

@cshelton wrote:

All of this would seem consistent with a firewall problem except that I’m not running a firewall on my router (or at least I really don’t think I am 🙂 ) and then I would expect the same problems with iTunes (although that may demonstrate my misunderstanding). It would also be consistent with a wireless problem, except that the same problem happens when going from mt-daapd on my Kuro to iTunes on my PC.

The other symptom I’d guess you were seeing but didn’t report is that if you stop and start the server on the Kuro, it appears again in the iTunes server list.

This happens when the box acting as a server doesn’t receive mdns requests. Usually this is because the box in question (the Kuro) has a firewall that’s blocking packets to 224.0.0.251 on port 5353. It can also happen if you are running a kernel without multicast enabled.

You can check to see if you are running some kind of firewall on the Kuro, if so, try disabling it. If that works, then you can work to get specific rules for the multicast.

If the latter is the problem, you can sometimes work around it by forcing your network card into promiscuous mode. (ifconfig eth0 promisc)

— Ron

[cshelton]

Ron,

Many thanks. I am posting what worked for me in case someone else had a similar problem and a web search brings up this page.

I made two changes. I don’t know if they were both necessary, but afterward, the problems I described were resolved:

1. I changed /etc/sysctl.conf: The line “net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1” I changed to be “net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 0” This changes /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/rp_filter from 1 to 0 (and the change sticks after reboots). My hope was that this would turn off any IP filtering the kernel was doing. Perhaps it was unncessary.

2. I turned on permiscuous mode on the ethernet card, as suggested. Multicast was enabled, but the Roku couldn’t connect to the Kuro. Perhaps this was a temporary wireless problem, but turning on permiscuous mode worked.

-Christian

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