Why is the minidlna database not being refreshed?

Question

I am developing a MiniDLNA server to stream media over WiFi. Existing files are shown properly. However, when I add new files to media folders the changes are not updated acros

Answer 1

AzP already provided most of the information, but some of it is incorrect.

First of all, there is no such option inotify_interval. The only option that exists is notify_interval and has nothing to do with inotify.

So to clarify, notify_interval controls how frequently the (mini)dlna server announces itself in the network. The default value of 895 means it will announce itself about once every 15 minutes, meaning clients will need at most 15 minutes to find the server. I personally use 1-5 minutes depending on client volatility in the network.

In terms of getting minidlna to find files that have been added, there are two options:

• The first is equivalent to removing the file files.db and consists in restarting minidlna while passing the -R argument, which forces a full rescan and builds the database from scratch. Since version 1.2.0 there's now also the -r argument which performs a rebuild action. This preserves any existing database and drops and adds old and new records, respectively.
• The second is to rely on inotify events by setting inotify=yes and restarting minidlna. If inotify is set to =no, the only option to update the file database is the forced full rescan.

Additionally, in order to have inotify working, the file-system must support inotify events, which is not the case in most remote file-systems. If you have minidlna running over NFS it will not see any inotify events because these are generated on the server side and not on the client.

Finally, even if inotify is working and is supported by the file-system, the user under which minidlna is running must be able to read the file, otherwise it will not be able to retrieve necessary metadata. In this case, the logfile (usually /var/log/minidlna.log) should contain useful information.