Jellyfin not discoverable

[MrBlond]

Use case:
I want to use Jellyfin as a DNLA mediaserver in my homenetwork, my primary use case is to expose the audio files  from my NAS in the WIIM app to stream music to my WIIM players around the house.

Problem:
The problem I have is i am unable to discover Jellyfin (or any DLNA mediaserver) in the WIIM app or mconnect app on my phone.

Current setup
I am using a wired NUC as my homelab with ESXI installed on it. One of these virtual machines runs Unbuntu Server 20.04.6 LTS and is my homelab. On that Ubuntu server i am running a docker setup with various applications, and i recently added the Jellyfin container to my docker-compose file. As part of the docker script I made sure to include network_mode : host to ensure it can be discovered in the network. I have mounted the media from my NAS (an old NETGear 102) to my homelab and after bringing up the docker container it finds my local media and scans it all in. So from that perspective Jellyfin works very well. From the admin dashboard i have set the DLNA settings to enable a DLNA Server and to blast alive messages, currently i set that interval to 30 seconds.

Where next?
Despite all these efforts i am unable to get Jellyfind discovered. I can browse the the Jellyfin url from any device in the network, but it is not discovered unfortunately.

As a test i enabled DNLA from my Win11 machine and those files were immediately discovered by my WIMM application and by my mconnect app on my phone.

Within Jellyfin itself there is not much else i can configure so i am thinking there might be something in Ubuntu i need to add / change to make DNLA discoverable in my network from that machine, but not really sure. Any suggestions where to look next to fix this issue?

[TheDreadPirate]

On the Ubuntu host make sure that port 1900 and 7359 on the firewall is open.

sudo ufw allow 1900
sudo ufw allow 7359

[MrBlond]

Thank you for the suggestion. I've done that, but still not discoverable unfortunately. Would I also need to open these up from within ESXI perhaps?

[TheDreadPirate]

I have no idea. Its been ages since I've used ESXi, but I don't recall having to do any firewall stuff on the hypervisor.

Is your Jellyfin server on the same subnet as the DLNA client?

[MrBlond]

I installed Ubuntu Server directly on a separate NUC, mounted my network drives, installed docker-compose, brought up the containers with Jellyfin and opened up the ports as you suggested. Very similar as I had done on the virtual Ubuntu Server. This leads me to believe it is an ESXI issue, not so much an Ubuntu or JellyFin issue. Thanks for your support

[ome cor]

Hi, I basically have the same problem. Posted it here in general troubleshooting, when this subforum was probably the better place.

In short; I'm running Jellyfin server on macOS (native on old Mac-mini). Everything works fine when using the Jellyfin client on either my TV or iPad, but I can't seem to get the DLNA server recognized by any DLNA-client. Like you, I also wanted to run the DLNA server for sharing audiofiles.

All necessary ports seem to be open (this is from terminal output);
UDP *:7359
UDP *:ssdp (which is port 1900)
UDP *:52394
TCP *:8096 (LISTEN)
TCP 8096->37274 (ESTABLISHED)

I tried other DLNA servers (Kodi on my mac-mini, Windows Media Streaming on a pc) and they immediately show up as a source on either my TV, AV-receiver, or VLC. So I'm pretty sure my network is fine.

@MrBlond: I understand you got it working by installing everything directly on the NUC instead of using a VM? Did you put anymore effort in getting the VM-Jellyfin working?

I can offcourse install another DLNA server just to share my audio, but it feels a bit redundant, since Jellyfin should be able to do it just fine.

Does anyone have an idea why this is not working? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[TheDreadPirate]

Is your "old" mac-mini in the same subnet as all your other devices? Is the mac-mini you mention installing Kodi on the same one you are running Jellyfin from?

[ome cor]

Yes it is on the same subnet. And I tried Kodi on that very same mac-mini that has problems with Jellyfin -> discovered the second I enable DLNA.

I refered to the mac-mini as old because it is still an intel-based Mac (and actually pretty old, I believe from 2011). But I also tried Jellyfin on my m1-macbook air, and it has the same problem. Therefore it seems like the problem is with Jellyfin, maybe specifically the macOS version.

I would like to know if other mac-users experience the same issue, but from reading other posts on this forum, I get the idea that most users are either linux/windows or use the docker container.

[tmsrxzar]

potentially something wrong with the DLNA server in jellyfin, the last time i tried to test it i had the same experience where nothing would find it

you're not wrong; mac users are not the majority jellyfin users (as far as i've noticed)

[ome cor]

**Bump**

Any mac users willing to give to give the DLNA server a try, and report back their findings?