MediaMonkey forum

I have just installed MMS in my office's data server. A dedicated portable hard drive attached to it have a big collection of music files. When installing MM5 in a computer, inside the local network, MM5 finds the MMS inmediatly and starts to load its files into its Library.

From home, via my VPN connection, I could see the MMS Dashboard via a web-browser (Chrome, Edge), and browse the files in all the configured collections. But, through MM5 installed in my home computer, I can't connect to the MMS. When I am trying to add the server, via "Devices & Services" adding my server IP:Port setting, I don't know what to insert in the "device description file path:". I have tried all options provided in the pull-down menu with no success.

The error message pops-up (and looks incomplete): "http://192.168.0.10:10222/DeviceDescription.xml can not be reached. Error:"

More rare, even: from my home connection, I can add, reach and browse the server Dashboard and collections as a web page from MM5's Internet Node.

Any idea of what is happening?

Hi there, sorry for the late reply. I just noticed this post.

First - 192.168.0.10 looks like a local IP address. Is that the address you're typing in, or is it showing up incorrectly (possibly indicating some issue with MM)? Or is it your VPN as some sort of local proxy?

Second - It looks like MM's device description xml is defined as /devicedescription.xml, all lowercase. It should be case insensitive, but see if you get something when you connect to x.x.x.x:10222/devicedescription.xml in your web browser. (Whatever IP address that you're able to connect to the web version from. But omit /web/ from the URL.)

Thank you for your help, drakinite.

Let me explain:
1) That IP 192.168.0.10 is certainly a local IP. It is the fixed IP that belongs to my Server and it is reachable only inside the LAN.
2) I can reach that "local" IP remotely only if I am connected to my office LAN via my VPN connection.
3) While connected to my office, vía the VPN, I can play the files in the server drive, adding them to my MM Library. It works very good, but the chalenge is to incorporate files into the the Library via the MMS (that is also already runnig ok in my LAN Server).
4) Using the "Internet" Node of MediaMonkey 5, I can succesfully get access to the MMS Dashboard web page, navigating inside MM5 browser.
5) But, using "Devices & Services" Node of MediaMonkey 5, I can not add the MMS as a source.

I have tried your suggestion, using "devicedescription.xml" all lowercase, but with no success. From Chrome or Edge browsers, I can succesfully access the Dashboard typing just x.x.x.x:10222 (without any extra "/web/", "/DeviceDescriptio.xml" or other stuff). The same happens as I mentioned before in point 4).

Oh man, this is a doozy. Mayyyybe it could be a protocol issue?
Full disclosure, I only recently joined the team and I'm nowhere near an expert on MMS, or MM5, for that matter. But on the Wikipedia article for UPnP, it says that it uses UDP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play). I'm not certain, but maybe the upnpserver within MMS uses UDP while the web client uses TCP; and your VPN is blocking one protocol and not the other?

I'll ask the others about this and see if they know. They are pretty busy at the moment working on MM5, but they might be able to provide some knowledge that I don't have.

And if you put the x.x.x.x:10222/DeviceDescriptio.xml directly to address bar of your Chrome/Edge browser on the same PC, do you see the description XML?

If I put directly to the address on my Chrome/Edge browser:

Outside office (via VPN):
1)x.x.x.x:10222/DeviceDescription.xml ----> Fails ("Could not find web page x.x.x.x")
2)x.x.x.x:10222 -----> Success (Opens MMS Dashboard)

Inside my office's LAN:
1)x.x.x.x:10222/DeviceDescription.xml ----> Fails
2)x.x.x.x:10222 -----> Success

And if you put just
x.x.x.x:10222/description.xml
?

I though that I changed the description file to DeviceDescription.xml (against descriptions.xml ), but maybe it has not been propagated to the newest build.

Success!
That was it. I clould access remotely the MM Server via the VPN connection, and through MM5 "Devices & Services" node, by specifiying "descriptions.xml" instead of "DeviceDescription.xml" in the path to description file field.

Thank you very much.

One little question remaining: that change in the description file name you mnetioned, will it be eventually deployed and so required to be changed in the future? In other words, will this setup last or shuold it be necessary to redefine the connection settings in the near future?

Hey, that's great!

To answer your question, well, I currently see in the most recent version of the MMS code that there's a case for both devicedescription.xml and description.xml. So ideally, we could have both paths return the same file. I'm really not sure how devicedescription.xml isn't working and description.xml is, since upnpserver.js hasn't been changed in the past 2 years. But hey, I'm glad you found a solution!

Yes, both will work.
I guess we will have to post another build soon.