Trouble connecting to a remote library

[Havenstad FM]

Hi Bernd,

In our studio we are running PFOA on one pc (PF-Master) and the Media Library Server is running on another pc (PF-MLS).
The music tracks are stored in a folder on a NAS with different genres of music in subfolders and on the PF-MLS a shared folder is pointing to the main folder on the NAS. The different categories of music are setup as watched folders in the MLS and the PF-Master is connected to these libraries as remote libraries. O, and i use the setting 'Use absolute paths'

So far so good, and it all works, but in the debug log i notice a lot of errors indicating network troubles and my guess is that the NAS is not fast enough to serve the music.

Therefore we did set up a new windows machine with a large SSD drive on which we copied all our music tracks. On this PF-MLS-NEW i also installed the MLS and this time the music is added as watched folders from it's own SSD.

Furthermore i created a VLAN (named VLAN11) with the PF-Master, the NAS, the PF-MLS and the PF-MLS-NEW in it. All these machines use a second ethernet card with it's own subnet in this VLAN11 and their addresses are 192.168.11.?? The NAS and the PF-MLS are only there during the transition fase, if everything works with the new PF-MLS-NEW they will no longer be needed.

I make all connections based on IP-Addresses. So PF-MLS is 192.168.11.17 and PF-MLS-NEW is 192.168.11.18.

In the PF-Master the current remote library connections are made to 192.168.11.17:8088 and this is working fine. But if i now try to add a new remote library and connect it to 192.168.11.18:8088 (the PF-MLS-NEW) i get the error:

• The remote media library server connection is NOT valid!

Which is strange because the current connection to the 192.168.11.17 (PF-MLS) is working perfectly and also, i can ping the 192.168.11.18 with good results from the PF-Master. I double checked the port and password settings and is the MLS was running and everything seems to be ok except that i cannot connect.

Can you give me the golden tip?

With kind regards,

Jack Reitsema
ITC Havenstad.FM

[radio42]

Please send your Debug Log to take a look at - what specific errors are in there might best be evaluated by myself, as I know when I write stuff to the log

The only thing I can think of is either a firewall issue (e.g. the port is blocked either on the master or on the mls side) or any other application level blocking, e.g. comming from a virus protection system.
The media library server's password is correct I assume?

[Havenstad FM]

Hi Bernd,

Allright, attached you will find a logfile from this morning between 00:00 - 08:00 to be sure nobody was manually messing up the results. I removed our login/password combination and translated all dutch error messages to english, the rest is original.

I also include the access log for the same period of the MLS and as far as i can see the on the MLS side everything works fine, but in the debug log you will see hundreds of .NET errors.

One thing i cannot find in the log is which MLS connection is used. I added the remote libraries with a primary and secondary connection entry, but the log does not indicate which connection is used.

I'm very interested to your findings regarding this log.

With kind regards,

Jack Reitsema
ITC Havenstad.FM

[radio42]

Almost all the exceptions are normal, as they JUST indicate a so called "FirstChanceException" - which are in most cases normal.
E.g. a TCP/IP socket connection might be closed by the Windows Winsock layer and thus a FirstChanceException is thrown on the next send/receive operation. I do log all first chance exceptions, to be sure I always get the 'full' picture.
However, I ALWAYS perform a reconnect and retry of the failed the operation in such a case !
(typically and unused client connection might be terminated after 30 sec. of inactivity - as such the next command must retry).

In the TCP/IP world, there is no reliable way to detect a closed socket connection, except to try to send some data - which will then fail and which will then result in such FirstChanceExceptions being logged.
(maybe I'll try to remove those MLS related first chance exceptions in a future release)

As said above: the Debug Log is mainly only for ME and can not be gracefully interpreted by yourself

However, I can see from the MLS log, that the "retry mechanism" works as expected and all commands are successfully handled by the MLS!

So all should be fine (no real network errors)!

[Havenstad FM]

Hi Bernd,

Well, i am still trying to get to know the deeper secrets of ProppFrexx and the many logmessages regarding deleted sockets etc. looked like trouble...

Thanks again for the reassurance,

Regards,

Jack Reitsema
ITC Havenstad.FM

[radio42]

If you are still talking about the Debug log which you send me.
ALL is normal!!!they are only possible FirstChanceExceptions and NO real exception!
As said above: the Debug Log is mainly only for ME and can not be gracefully interpreted by yourself