Ubuntu 22 UPnP Sharing is not working

Applications
1

I use the media sharing very frequent. I found that from few days it is not working as expected. I tried many things with the help of OpenAI but no success.

Here is the issue, I start media sharing on wifi, I use VLC UPnP to see the files on client devices like Android, it doesn’t show up anything. While troubleshooting I tried the same with the host system’s vlc and found that when I just turn on the sharing the media server appears if the VLC is already open and works fine. If I reopen VLC on the host system the server is not discoverable anymore, but for other devices it is not appearing at all which was working earlier. The router is same, devices are same. Idk what went wrong?

Recently I installed Ardour and waydroid. I suspected their installation might blocking the UPnP broadcasting and I completely removed both of them. Still no success. After 3 days of unsuccessful attempts, I posted this issue here.

@jensgeorg please help.

2

Can you check if the process “rygel” is still running?

3 
spv@l-000175in-sss:~$ systemctl --user status rygel.service 
● rygel.service - Rygel DLNA/UPnP server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/rygel.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-04-24 16:20:33 IST; 45s ago
   Main PID: 7359 (rygel)
      Tasks: 4 (limit: 38067)
     Memory: 15.7M
        CPU: 191ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1001.slice/user@1001.service/app.slice/rygel.service
             └─7359 /usr/bin/rygel

Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss systemd[2833]: Starting Rygel DLNA/UPnP server...
Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss rygel[7359]: Rygel v0.40.3 starting…
Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss systemd[2833]: Started Rygel DLNA/UPnP server.
Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss rygel[7359]: New plugin “MediaExport” available
Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss rygel[7359]: “file:///home/spv/Pictures/Screenshots” harvested
Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss rygel[7359]: rygel-media-export-harvesting-task.vala:309: Harvesting of file:///home/spv/Pictures/Scree>
Apr 24 16:20:33 l-000175in-sss mx-extract[7364]: rygel-media-export-extract.vala:180: Started with descriptors 3 (in) 4 (out)
4

If you run gupnp-av-cp on your local computer, can you see the share or is it also not showing up?

5

Seems gupnp-av-cp always show up the server.

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6

Okay. Thanks. Hm. Need to experiment a bit

7

Does gupnp-av-cp still show it when you start it with gupnp-av-cp -i <your-network-interface> ?

8

Yes! the gupnp-av-cp always showing the server.

More interestingly, I have tried another way, if my router or any other device have been changed, since I am getting this error.

In one of my PCs I ran same version of ubuntu via usb live. And it works as expected. All the rygel config I saw matching with the live os.

could you please suggest what else should I try to match?

9

I completely doubt now, is it really rygel, which causing issue?

10

It’s a bit annoying really. I have seen this behavior myself in my network and it’s also not always clear to me what causes it. Sometimes just restarting Rygel helps, sometimes the PC needs a reboot, sometimes the client is just stupid

11

I mean the obvious thing would be that for some reason now ufw is blocking stuff