Rhythmbox doesn’t see Firefly share

[andybuckley]

Hi,

I’ve spent a couple of evenings trying to get Firefly working on my home network. I have a Linux desktop/server (Ubuntu, now Feisty for about a week) with Firefly installed and a load of FLAC files. I can get to the Firefly web interface on port 3689 and the files have been detected.

However, using Rhythmbox on either the server or my laptop (another Ubuntu Feisty) I don’t see any music share being offered by Firefly. The Firefox DAAP plugin is definitely enabled – actually, if I run the desktop and laptop Rhythmboxes at the same time, each sees the shared music on the other so DAAP definitely isn’t being blocked. Any ideas how I can get Firefly working properly / test why it isn’t working at the moment?

I’ve seen previous forum posts about multicast networking, UDP packets and firewalls – I’ve explicitly verified that the firewall on my Edimax ADSL/LAN router is disabled. And anyway, the successful DAAP exports from the Rhythmboxes suggest that DAAP doesn’t seem to have any trouble propagating on the network…

Thanks in advance!
Andy

[rpedde]

@andybuckley wrote:

Hi,

I’ve spent a couple of evenings trying to get Firefly working on my home network. I have a Linux desktop/server (Ubuntu, now Feisty for about a week) with Firefly installed and a load of FLAC files. I can get to the Firefly web interface on port 3689 and the files have been detected.

However, using Rhythmbox on either the server or my laptop (another Ubuntu Feisty) I don’t see any music share being offered by Firefly. The Firefox DAAP plugin is definitely enabled – actually, if I run the desktop and laptop Rhythmboxes at the same time, each sees the shared music on the other so DAAP definitely isn’t being blocked. Any ideas how I can get Firefly working properly / test why it isn’t working at the moment?

I’ve seen previous forum posts about multicast networking, UDP packets and firewalls – I’ve explicitly verified that the firewall on my Edimax ADSL/LAN router is disabled. And anyway, the successful DAAP exports from the Rhythmboxes suggest that DAAP doesn’t seem to have any trouble propagating on the network…

Thanks in advance!
Andy

If you are using rhythmbox, then you already have an mdns responder, either avahi or howl. Did you compile firefly with the –enable-howl or –enable-avahi flags?

[andybuckley]

I’m running the packaged version from Ubuntu Feisty – not quite sure what options that’s been compiled with. Is there any easy way to find out?

I’m not yet au fait with mDNS, Avahi etc., so my progress so far has been pretty haphazard. Should Firefly with the Avahi/Howl option be all that I’ll need to get streaming working on my home LAN?

Thanks for the help,
Andy

[rpedde]

@andybuckley wrote:

I’m running the packaged version from Ubuntu Feisty – not quite sure what options that’s been compiled with. Is there any easy way to find out?

I’m not yet au fait with mDNS, Avahi etc., so my progress so far has been pretty haphazard. Should Firefly with the Avahi/Howl option be all that I’ll need to get streaming working on my home LAN?

Thanks for the help,
Andy

based on a conversation on another thread, there are a couple things:

1. Avahi doesn’t start by default. Check your /etc/default/avahi-server (i think?) and make sure it’s set to start at boot
2. Once avahi is running, restart the mt-daapd server. It should appear.

It will probably disappear after a couple hours — looks like feisty has a built-in firewall that disallows multicast. You’ll need to enable incoming UDP on 5353 from 224.0.0.251 to make the mdns work.

That’s all the info I have now, and I don’t know how or where to set up the firewall on feisty. Maybe I will tonight, as I hope to upgrade my build server to feisty on amd64, so I can do 64 bit builds and debugging.

— Ron

[pshirley]

I had the same problem, but managed to make things work (again — all was well until I upgraded to Feisty). Do take the previous poster’s suggestion of making sure that avahi is running first. The only contribution I can make is to describe how I got the firewall to step aside and let Firefly do its work.

First, install Firestarter; it’s available from the “universe” repository in Synaptic. More information on Firestarter is available at http://www.fs-security.com/ . In a nutshell, it’s a GUI for configuring iptables.

In the rest of this post I will recommend setting up firewall rules that allow connections from “anyone” — this is because the machines I am working on are well-protected by another firewall. If you are not similarly protected, or if you are not sure, please be careful! In such a case I would recommend restricting inbound traffic so it is only allowed from machines on your network. Do this by selecting “IP, host, or network” and specifying your network’s IP range in the form 192.168.0.1/24, assuming you’re running a class C network (if all of your machines’ IP addresses start with 192.168 then you’re running a private class C network. Make sure the number after 192.168. matches the one your machines use, then use .1/24 — this should work).

Start Firestarter, and on the “Policy” tab edit the “Inbound traffic policy”. Select the (empty) list under “Allow service” and add two rules: One allowing inbound connections on port 3689 for anyone, and another allowing inbound connections on port 5353 for anyone.

Now edit your (empty) /etc/firestarter/user-pre file (you must su or sudo to do this) so that it contains the following lines:

$IPT -A INPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT

$IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT

Save this, then restart firestarter — you might be able to do this from the GUI, but I did it from the command line. Again, you’ll need to su or sudo to do this:

$ /etc/init.d/firestarter restart

You should now be able to see your Firefly share from other machines (iTunes, Roku, Rhythmbox, etc.) — assuming you have properly started Firefly, of course :).

Hope that helps.

–Peter

[andybuckley]

That’s great: works for me. Thanks, and sorry it’s taken me this long to get round to trying to set Firefly up again 🙂

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately I can’t get this to work. I’m guessing it’s the avahi-daemon that is causing the problem.

This morning it streamed for 1.5 hours succesfully from my Ubuntu box to my mac but then dropped and now the mac refuses to see it. This tells me it is not a firewall or mt-daapd.conf problem, correct???

ip tables:

sudo cat /etc/firestarter/user-pre
$IPT -A INPUT -p udp –dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp –dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT

I also have allowed the IP address of my mac, and opened 3689 and 5353 to everyone.

mt-daapd.log:

cat /var/log/mt-daapd.log
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Firefly Version svn-1696: Starting with debuglevel 2
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Error loading plugin /usr/lib/mt-daapd/plugins/ssc-script.so: plugin declined to load
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Plugin loaded: daap/svn-1696
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Plugin loaded: ssc-ffmpeg/svn-1696
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Plugin loaded: rsp/svn-1696
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Starting rendezvous daemon
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Starting signal handler
2008-09-07 16:32:54 (b709b6c0): Initializing database
2008-09-07 16:32:55 (b709b6c0): Starting web server from /usr/share/mt-daapd/admin-root on port 3689
2008-09-07 16:32:55 (b709b6c0): Registering rendezvous names
2008-09-07 16:32:55 (b709b6c0): Serving 9549 songs. Startup complete in 1 seconds

One thing I notice is that on the firefly page (which I can access from my mac) the Bonjor server is listed as stopped.

ARRGGGFHH!H!!! How do I find out the cause of my problem and fix this?

[fizze]

The Bonjour service is always listed as stopped. Thats a bug/feature 😉

Hm, there are various bonjour/rendezvous/mDNS tools out there that allow you to browse through the findings.

Safest thing is to use wireshark / tcpdump / etc. to check all the packets and change the filters accordingly.

I’m not so sure about those multicast rules of yours…. 🙄

[Anonymous]

okay i’ll have a go with wireshark.

What do you mean by this?

I’m not so sure about those multicast rules of yours…. Rolling Eyes

Cheers

[fizze]

Well just that. I am not sure whether they are correct.

Local link multicasts are in the address range 224.0.0.0/24. So I’d set the rules like that. And then there is normal unicast traffic targeted to the firefly server, so that needs to be open as well. Anyway, set your iptables to allow all, and then have a go with tcpdump or $your_fave_network_eavesdropping_tool and you’ll see 😉

[Author]

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