Share Directories won't scan

alias_neo · Post by **alias_neo** » Wed Jul 27, 2011 11:38 pm

I just got Twonky installedo n my arch box (using kirkwood).

I have been setting different share paths in the web UI to try and add my media but it's not working.

if I add the path /home/username , this works fine and it will add all the files in my home folder.

If I add /srv/mm/Music, srv/mm/Video and /srv/mm/Photo (all of which are where my media is located) it refuses to scan any of these folders and i get zero results every time.

Any ideas what the problem might be? I have tried changing the permissions, the owner and anything i can think of to match my user directory but still it will not scan and it remains on zero.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks.

BrandonSk · Post by **BrandonSk** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 12:17 am

Hi neo / all,

I just have been experiencing the same problems. I do have a working solution, but that is not a solution I am happy with... I think this behaviour of the Twonky Media Server is a bug.

This is what I figured out by now:
For some reason, TMS does not like capital letters in paths. You have "M"usic or "V"ideo which cause the problem.
I noticed this when I hit the 'Browse' button on the Share config page and all I saw was only directories with small letters.

After some trial and error I confirmed this behavior. Now, instead of renaming all the paths, there is a workaround.

I'll demonstrate on my setup:
1) Data are stored at: /srv/FTP/public/Movies and /srv/FTP/public/Music
2) I created 'data' directory in /root (e.g. /root/data .... alternatively, if you are not root, you can use your home dir ~/data)

3) Then I created symlinks to my data directories:
ln -s /srv/FTP/public/Movies ~/data/movies
ln -s /srv/FTP/public/Music ~/data/music

4) As you probably guessed by now, point TMS to scan the directory ~/data (/root/data in my case) or you can even point it to individual sub-directories (e.g. /root/data/movies and /root/data/music) ...
... and voila - It's working!

Now on the serious side - Can developers confirm this bug(?) and fix it as soon as possible? If not a bug, can they explain us how to handle paths with capital letters?

parnott · Post by **parnott** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 1:16 am

It is not a bug. All directory and filenames in Linux are case sensative.

If you only saw directories in the browse dialog with lower case letters then that is what they have been named. I.E. 'music' and 'Music' are not the same in Linux.

alias_neo · Post by **alias_neo** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:43 am

The case is not the problem. I tried renaming them lowercase and that made no change. However, moving them out of /srv and keeping the uppercase they did work.

Seems like Twonky is disallowed from scanning in /srv

parnott · Post by **parnott** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 5:00 pm

OK, I did a little more digging and indeed the /srv directory looks to be on the blacklist (i.e. directories that are never scanned e.g. /boot, /bin, /etc, /var ...). Don't know why.

Anyhow, you could possibly simplify things by creating your symlink to point one directory level higher so you only need one. Something like-
ln -s /srv/FTP/public ~/data

Or better perhaps create a /srv/FTP/public/media directory and point your symlink there.

Personally I have never encountered this problem as none of my Linux boxes use the /srv directory.

alias_neo · Post by **alias_neo** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 5:13 pm

Its a server so I prefer to keep all of the services it serves under /srv, IV now had to reconfigure my FTP and samba shares because of moving the multimedia. Linux version of Twonky feels a bit low quality and makes me feel reluctant to pay for it, particularly since the transcode options are unavailable on my NASs hardware. (Kirkwood)

parnott · Post by **parnott** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 5:35 pm

I've used Twonky on Linux and Windows for over 5 years. They are functionally identical, but I prefer the Linux version because I can run it on my NAS.

Transcoding setup on all platforms is the same. You have to install and configure various open source programs, the main ones being ffmpeg and flac.

Now the caveat. Your Kirkwood processor and most other NAS processors do not have the horsepower to do transcoding in real-time. You may be able to get audio to work, but video never. Actually many low to mid-power X86 CPUs will also struggle with real-time video transcoding.

alias_neo · Post by **alias_neo** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 7:56 pm

[quote="parnott"]I've used Twonky on Linux and Windows for over 5 years. They are functionally identical, but I prefer the Linux version because I can run it on my NAS.

Transcoding setup on all platforms is the same. You have to install and configure various open source programs, the main ones being ffmpeg and flac.

Now the caveat. Your Kirkwood processor and most other NAS processors do not have the horsepower to do transcoding in real-time. You may be able to get audio to work, but video never. Actually many low to mid-power X86 CPUs will also struggle with real-time video transcoding.[/quote]

The Web UI just kind of reminds me of some poorly supported open-source software of the past, not something i'd be paying for. It always seems to open in the Mobile style interface whether on my XOOM, my mobile or my desktop, looking a little silly on a big high res monitor.

As for transcoding, I can understand why my Kirkwood couldnt handle it, but I now wonder what this gives me over minidlna which works fine mostly except for non-detection by things like Skifta on my Android phone.

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