Running MinimServer
Table of contents
Starting MinimServer
MinimServer and MinimWatch
Online updates
Automatic updates
Package management
Configuration web page
MinimServer logging
Log file location
Log file default location
ohNet debug logging
Reading audio files
Multiple MinimServer instances
Starting MinimServer
If you haven't already installed the MinimServer download package on the computer or NAS that you want to use to run MinimServer, see the Installing page for details of how to do this.
To start MinimServer on Windows, select the Start Menu item for MinimServer. Alternatively, you can double-click the MinimServer desktop icon if you chose to create this during MinimServer installation.
To start MinimServer on Mac, open the MinimServer application.
To start MinimServer on Linux, please refer to the Starting and stopping MinimServer on Linux section.
MinimServer and MinimWatch
The MinimServer application runs the media server and provides a user interface on the same computer for monitoring and control. The optional MinimWatch application enables you to monitor and control MinimServer from a different computer on your local network, using a similar interface to what you'd see if running MinimServer locally. This "remote control" capability is very useful if the computer running MinimServer is in another part of the house or if MinimServer is running on a NAS or as a background process with no user interface. See the Monitoring and control page for details of how to monitor and control MinimServer.
Online updates
From 0.8.1 onwards, MinimServer and MinimWatch can install online updates without needing to do a
download and reinstall. When a new update becomes available, you'll see a pop-up dialog informing
you about the update and asking if you want to install it. You can install the update from this dialog
or you can ask to be reminded again later with another prompt.
The reminder interval is 1 day by default, and this can be increased to a maximum of 30 days by
setting the .updateReminder property. At any time,
you can use the About dialog to check whether any online updates are available. After installing an
online update, you need to select Relaunch from the update dialog for the update to become active.
Automatic updates
From 0.8.3 onwards, MinimServer and MinimWatch can automatically check for and install the latest
online update if it isn't already installed. This requires the computer or NAS running MinimServer
or MinimWatch to be connected to the internet and the .autoUpdate property to be
set to true (the default value).
The automatic update check is done each time MinimServer or MinimWatch is launched or relaunched. If a later update is found, the installer downloads and installs the update and relaunches MinimServer.
If you'd prefer to be prompted to install updates
manually as described in the Online updates section, you can set
the .autoUpdate property to false.
Package management
From 0.8.1 onwards, MinimServer and MinimWatch have a package management system for installing and removing add-on packages that extend the functionality of the original download.
The easiest way to install and remove packages is from the graphical interface provided by MinimServer and MinimWatch (see the Monitoring and control page). After selecting Properties from the minim icon in the system tray or the menu bar, select the Packages tab of the Properties dialog. This tab shows you what packages you currently have installed and what packages are available for installation. To install a package, select the package in the 'Available packages' list, click Install and follow the prompts. To remove a package, select the package in the 'Installed packages' list and click Remove. After installing or removing a package, you need to click the Relaunch button on the Packages tab for the change to become effective.
At present, the only add-on package that is available is MinimStreamer. See the MinimStreamer website for details of the additional functionality that MinimStreamer provides.
Important: Before installing MinimStreamer, you need to have activated a MinimServer 2 full license or trial license. See this page for more information about MinimServer 2 licensing.
If MinimStreamer is shown as "greyed out" in the list of available packages, this probably means you have a MinimServer 2 starter license. To install and run MinimStreamer, you need either a full license or a trial license.
The package management system is also used for online updates. This means that any online updates that are available and not yet installed are shown on the Packages tab as available packages and can be installed in the same way as other packages.
Each package contains one or more modules. You can view a list of installed modules by selecting the Modules tag of the Properties dialog. This information can be useful for problem determination.
It's also possible to install and remove packages using console commands. See the Controlling MinimServer using console commands section for details.
Configuration web page
When MinimServer is running, you can access a configuration web page hosted by MinimServer.
From this page, you can check the status of MinimServer,
set an initial content directory, and initiate a rescan of your library.
To access the configuration page from a web browser, enter
n.n.n.n:9790
in the browser address bar, where n.n.n.n is the IP address of the
computer or NAS running MinimServer. If you have changed the http.port property to some
other value, use that value instead of 9790. You can also view the configuration web page
by selecting Configure from the MinimServer or MinimWatch minim icon in the system tray
(see this section).
In MinimServer 2, the configuration web page also provides License and Profiles tabs. The License tab enables you to activate or deactivate a full license or free 30-day trial license. The Profiles tab enables you to create new profiles and change your active profile. For more information about profiles, see the Profiles section.
MinimServer logging
MinimServer writes logging messages to a log file. This can be useful for status monitoring and problem determination. See the Log file location section below for details of the name and location of this file.
Accessing the contents of the log file directly isn't always convenient, so MinimServer and MinimWatch provide a 'Show log' selection from the minim icon. This selection displays a log window which contains the most recent log messages, updated in real time as MinimServer runs. You can save the current contents of the log window by pressing the 'Save as' button.
You can control how much information is displayed in the log window by changing the logging level in the drop-down selection in the log window. The following logging levels are available:
| Info | Displays informational, warning and error messages. This is the default level and is recommended for normal use. |
| Verbose | Displays the same messages as Info, as well as more detailed information about what MinimServer is doing. For example, you'll see a list of directories that MinimServer is scanning during startup. |
| Debug | Displays the same messages as Verbose, as well as debugging information about the internal workings of MinimServer. This setting is used for problem determination and should be changed back to Info or Verbose when the necessary problem determination information has been obtained. |
| Trace | Displays the same messages as Debug, as well as detailed tracing information about the internal workings of MinimServer. This setting is used for certain problem determination scenarios and should be changed back to Info or Verbose when the necessary problem determination information has been obtained. |
If you are using the configuration web interface or the console interface, log messages can only be viewed
by looking at the log file. You can change the logging level by setting the the .logLevel
property (see the MinimServer properties page).
When setting the .logLevel property, the logging level values
are info, verbose, debug and trace
(entered as all lower case).
You can use the .logPrefix property (see
the MinimServer properties page) to specify
an optional prefix for all log messages. The prefix can be any string, or
it can be one of the following special values:
time
|
The current time in HH:mm:ss format (example: 13:34:56)
|
dateTime
|
The current date and time in
EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss
format (example: Mon Apr 08 13:34:56)
|
milliTime
|
The current time in HH:mm:ss.SSS format (example: 13:34:56.789)
|
thread
| The current thread ID (example: Thread-21:) |
milliThread
| The combination of milliTime and thread (example: 13:34:56.789 Thread-21:) |
The milliThread special value is used for all Debug and Trace messages.
For most MinimServer crashes, you should get a separate crash log file in the
same directory as the log file. The name of this file is
minimserver-crash-yyyymmdd-hhmmss.log, where
yyyymmdd-hhmmss is the date and time of the crash.
The contents of this file are useful for finding the cause of the crash and
fixing the problem.
Log file location
By default, MinimServer writes logging messages to a file named minimserver.log.
The default location of this file depends on which platform you are using to run MinimServer.
See the following section Log file default location
for a list of the default locations that MinimServer uses for all supported platforms.
You can change the name of the log file by setting the .logFile property.
For example, specifying the filename minimlog.txt will cause MinimServer to write
log information to the file minimlog.txt in the log file default location.
To write the log file in a different location, you can specify a fully qualified filesystem path
for some other location on the computer or NAS where MinimServer is running.
For example, specifying the path /Users/myuser/minimserver-log will cause MinimServer to write
log information to the file minimserver-log in the folder /Users/myuser.
To suppress disk logging, you can specify the single character '-'.
Log file default location
By default, MinimServer writes logging messages to a file named minimserver.log.
The default location of this file depends on which platform you are using to run MinimServer, as follows:
-
On Windows, the log file default location is the folder
C:\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\MinimServer\data
The AppData folder is hidden by default in Windows Explorer and you can access it by typing C:\Users\your-user-name\AppData (in full) into the Windows Explorer address bar. -
On Mac, the log file default location is the folder
/Users/your-user-name/Library/MinimServer
The /Users/your-user-name/Library folder is hidden by default in Mac Finder and you can access it by selecting Go > Go to Folder from the Finder menu bar. -
On Linux, the log file default location is the directory
minim-home/minimserver/datawhereminim-homeis the directory where you installed MinimServer -
On a Synology NAS, the log file default location is the
appDatafolder in theMinimServershared folder -
On a QNAP NAS, the log file default location is the
Publicshared folder -
On an ASUSTOR NAS, the log file default location is the
datafolder in theMinimServershared folder -
On a NETGEAR ReadyNAS, the log file default location is the
backupshared folder -
On a Melco N1, the log file default location is the
MinimServerfolder
ohNet debug logging
Setting the MinimServer logging level to Debug or Trace also has the effect of enabling ohNet debug logging. ohNet debug log messages are written to the MinimServer log file and don't appear in the log window.
The amount of ohNet debug logging is controlled by the value of the ohnet.debug property.
The default level (specified as the value Default) produces a small amount
of ohNet logging information. For more detailed ohNet logging, the value
All-Timer can be used. The value All is not recommended because
of the huge number of ohNet timer messages that it produces. You can use the value None
to disable all ohNet debug logging.
Reading audio files
When you start MinimServer, it looks for audio files in the directories
(folders) specified by the contentDir property and all subdirectories
(subfolders) of these directories. When MinimServer finds an audio file, it reads
the audio properties and any tag data that the file contains.
The contentDir property can be set to a single content directory or
multiple content directories.
You might need to use multiple content
directories if your music collection is partly on a local disk
and partly on a network disk, or if you want to structure
your collection in a way that allows you to selectively include or exclude some files
from the browse tree. Each content directory must be specified as a fully qualified absolute path
in the file system of the device running MinimServer.
To specify multiple content directories in the properties dialog,
use the '+' button to add an entry field and the '-' button to remove
an entry field. You can have up to eight entry fields. Any blank entry fields are ignored.
In the console interface, you can specify multiple directories (up to eight) by using the
prop command with curly braces. For example, you can enter:
prop contentDir={directory1}{directory2}
If you have multiple content directories, you can't use the same name for the
final folder in more than one content directory path. For example, you can't have both
/volume1/Music/Classical and /volume2/Music/Classical but
you can have both /volume1/Music/Classical1 and /volume2/Music/Classical2.
If you have a large number of audio files, it can take quite a long time for MinimServer to find and read them all. To reduce the time taken to do this, MinimServer maintains a cache for the audio file data that it needs. This means that it takes longer to start MinimServer for the first time after installation because it's reading all your audio files and creating the cache. When MinimServer is next started, it uses cached data instead of re-reading the audio files, so startup will be much quicker. MinimServer automatically updates the cache when any audio files are added, deleted or changed.
If the startupScan property is set to true (the default),
MinimServer does a complete library scan when it is started. This scan uses
MinimServer's library cache to avoid the overhead of reading audio files that haven't changed
since the last scan.
If the startupScan property is set to false,
MinimSever reads the library data from its cache and doesn't scan the
library files to check whether any files have changed since the cache was written.
This reduces startup time but might omit some recent additions or changes
to library files.
If the startupScan property is set to full,
MinimServer does a complete library scan when it is started and ignores any
cached library data. This can be useful if the cache data is suspected to be
inaccurate for any reason. With this setting, the cache data is also ignored when doing a Rescan
(see the Controlling MinimServer using the minim icon section).
Multiple MinimServer instances
You can run multiple instances of MinimServer on your local network. To help
you identify these different instances, you can use the displayName
property to specify a unique name for each instance. By default, MinimServer uses
a display name of the form
MinimServer[<hostName>]
where <hostName> is the network host name of the
computer on which MinimServer is running.
The display name for the server is displayed by UPnP control points. It's also used by MinimWatch to identify different running MinimServer instances.