Windows firewall -- which MM apps should be enabled?

[xmnboy]

Hello,

After a little debugging I've determined that the firewall on my WHS 2011 machine, which also hosts MM, is getting in the way of my Onkyo TX-8050 successfully retrieving media from the MM DLNA server. Simple experiment -- disable the "local network" firewall and MM shows through, everything works "hunki dori" -- enable the firewall and "no worki."

I prefer to keep the firewall enabled, even for the local network, so I "enabled" access for mediamonkey.exe, mediamonkey (non-skinned).exe, etc. Every single EXE in the MediaMonkey program files directory. Doesn't work... The Onkyo receiver sees the MM DLNA server but can't seem to connect with it. (Aside: if these apps are not enabled in the firewall the receiver doesn't even see the MM DLNA server.)

Are there some other MM apps that need to be enabled thru the firewall? Which applications are actually needed to support streaming?

Regards,

Paul Fischer

p.s. Is there a MM service that can be run in the background so I don't have to have a user logged onto the server and have the main MM application running? A reduced version of MM that works in a read-only mode for serving up, that I can point to the same database as the main MM program?

[Lowlander]

MediaMonkey.exe should be enough if you run skinned (otherwise the unskinned one).

Run as service has been requested.

[xmnboy]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll run my experiment again when I get some time over the weekend; this time only enabling the MM.exe apps for firewall access. But given my current configuration of the firewall, with all the exe files in the directory enabled thru the firewall, it should be working. Will let you know what I find.

[Lowlander]

You could add an additional rule that includes opening the port used by the MediaMonkey Server.

[xmnboy]

Can't figure out what the trick is. When you add MM to the firewall it only adds it to the inbound rules. I have to go into the advanced firewall tool to add MM to the outbound rules -- all ports -- but that doesn't help. I installed Windows Network Monitor to see if I could figure it out, but there is so much network traffic I can't figure it out, and I'm not a network expert...

Sure would love to know what needs to be done to make this work! Windows Media Server has a whole bunch of rules, both inbound and outbound, but I'm not sure which apply to MM...

[Lowlander]

Generally you'd want to make sure the port MediaMonkey uses is enabled for both inbound and outbound.

[xmnboy]

That is exactly what I have done. The rules I have implement essentially open up ALL ports if MM.exe is on the other side of the port. Doesn't seem to work.

Sorry, I haven't had much time to work on this lately, will probably have to wait a week or two before I can get back to it. If I find a solution, I'll post it here. In the meantime, if MM engineering could post precisely the ports that are used to make MM.exe work as a server, that might help.

Thanks for your help so far.

[GSV3MiaC]

Any further thoughts on this anyone? I am seeing something similar on a Win XP machine - having turned uPnP and SSDP services on, the MM4 DNLA server now pops up a notification when you enable media sharing, (and every time you delete it, and add a new server with a new port number) but any attempt to actually access the service (eg 'properties' from network area list, where the device is shown) comes back with a 'this device is not currently available on the network' error. The firewall ports for MM seem to be open (for both skinned and non skinned MM4), but the device can't be talked to (even from the same XP machine it is running on).

Guess this must be a firewall issue of some sort, but exactly what is a mystery. It works just dandy (without me doing anything ) from a Win7 PC, however trying to figure out what ports/applications have been opened on Win7 and mapping them back to WinXP is just too many oranges and apples comparisons.

D.

[Lowlander]

You may want to temporarily disable the firewall to see if it works, if it does it is the firewall.

[GSV3MiaC]

Solved .. thanks.

There were two issues - firstly I needed to restart the router (again!) for some reason, secondly you can't access the DNLA server from the same PC it is being run on, apparently. Other computers on the network could see it, but the XP PC it was running on could not.

[Lowlander]

You should be able to see it on the same PC, if you're using MM to see its own server set the port to 4000.