DlnaServer

A UPnP/DLNA MediaServer (DMS) that streams media from a QNAP NAS to TVs on the local network.

This is a ground-up redesign of an earlier DLNA server (v6.1), kept outside this repository. That reference is read-only and serves as the behavioural specification: what goes on the wire must stay compatible so the TVs that work today keep working. The internals are new.

How the two compare, measured (2026-09-03, on a tree that has since grown): the rewrite is 2.5x the raw lines but only 1.02x the hand-written logic — the rest is tests, XML docs, generated migrations and a real admin UI. The report those figures came from was deleted on 2026-09-08 along with the rest of the review history; the ratios are what mattered and are recorded here, the absolute counts are a dated snapshot.

Deployed and measured. This build runs on the NAS, its working set fell from 563.4 MB to 177.7 MB under the memory pass, and a television plays from it. 798 tests at 0 warnings, no vulnerable packages, no open Majors. What is still owed is a steady-state memory reading — the 177.7 MB was taken 255 s after a restart — and confirmation on a real television of the four DIDL fields added on 2026-09-06.

Version 1.1.0928. It is Major.Minor.MonthDate, and each project carries its own, so a number says which assembly changed. The one on the About page is the host's, which is the product version; the assembly table on that page lists the rest. release-notes.md says what changed for whoever runs the server, one entry per Major.Minor; docs/ holds everything internal. release-notes.md and LICENSE are both copied into the build and publish output, so a deployment carries them beside the binaries.

Licence: MIT. Free to use, change and pass on, with no warranty.

docs/decisions.md carries the conventions, the standing decisions and the traps, and its section 7b is the open-work list. docs/history.md is the batch-by-batch record of what changed and when.

What it does

• Serves a media library over UPnP/DLNA to televisions and other renderers on the local network.
• Indexes a folder tree, reads metadata with ffprobe, and makes previews with SkiaSharp.
• Keeps recently served files in memory so the NAS drives are not woken for a re-watch.
• Ships a Blazor admin UI on a second port: browse, search, per-file details, diagnostics, maintenance and an optional upload page.
• Reproduces the reference server's wire behaviour, with every deliberate difference written down and tested.

What it looks like

The admin UI, on a made-up library - generated test pictures, tones and colour bars, nothing from a real server.

Library - the newest files, with a preview, the kind and a subtitles badge on each	Dashboard - uptime, memory, the served-bytes cache and what the library holds
A file's page - play it in the browser, step through the folder, see everything read from it	Its audio tracks and subtitle files - found by name, or added, removed and relabelled by hand
Search files - every filter optional, here with subtitles	Settings - most changes apply as soon as you save

On a phone the menu folds behind a button: phone menu.

Projects

Project	Role
src/DlnaServer.Core	Domain model, DLNA types, configuration options, abstractions. No dependencies.
src/DlnaServer.Persistence	EF Core over SQLite: DbContext, entities, migrations, repositories.
src/DlnaServer.Media	Library scanning, ffprobe metadata, SkiaSharp thumbnails.
src/DlnaServer.Upnp	SSDP, description.xml, SCPD, SOAP services, DIDL-Lite. No EF, no HTTP.
src/DlnaServer.Admin	Blazor Server admin UI, as a Razor Class Library.
src/DlnaServer.Host	The ASP.NET Core host. The only executable; nothing references it.
tests/	Unit, architecture and integration projects - see Architecture.

The dependency directions and the entity/DTO boundary are enforced by tests/DlnaServer.ArchitectureTests, so a violation fails the build rather than a review.

Requirements

.NET 8 (global.json pins the 8.0.4xx SDK band). Linux or Windows; the target deployment is a QNAP NAS. ffmpeg is optional and only affects video and audio metadata and video previews.

Quick start

dotnet build DlnaServer.sln     # must stay at zero warnings
dotnet test  DlnaServer.sln
dotnet run --project src/DlnaServer.Host

Set Dlna.Library.SourceFolders before the first run. With no source folder configured the server falls back to its own folder and warns rather than refusing to start - so a fresh deployment comes up serving the wrong thing rather than not coming up.

Two ports, one process: one serves UPnP/DLNA and media, the other the admin UI. They must differ or startup fails. Deployment to the NAS is ./NasBuild.sh (NasBuild.usage.txt); the container path is Docker.usage.md, and host networking is not optional there, because SSDP is UDP multicast and a bridge does not forward it.

Nothing needs building to run a released version: each release on GitHub carries a linux-x64 archive, the same framework-dependent publish NasBuild.sh produces, and the image is published as ghcr.io/kopcot/dlnaserver, signed with cosign. Both are built, tested and smoke tested by the workflows in .github/workflows.

Documentation

Where	What
docs/	How it works, in detail
docs/architecture.md	A picture of how the pieces talk, then layout, dependency rules and naming
docs/dlna-compatibility.md	What goes on the wire, and every deliberate difference
docs/configuration.md	Every setting, and which need a restart
docs/operations.md	Running it, uploading, rebuilding, the admin UI, the management endpoints
docs/performance.md	The served-bytes cache and what it costs
docs/troubleshooting.md	It is not working - start here
docs/decisions.md	Why it is built this way: decisions, conventions, traps, open work
docs/history.md	Status, milestones, and the batch-by-batch record
release-notes.md	What changed, for whoever runs the server
docs/development.md	Build, the two hard rules, versioning, releases
.github/workflows	CI and releases: what runs on every change, nightly, and on a version bump
CONTRIBUTING.md	Who contributes, and where to start

Licence

MIT. Free to use, change and pass on, with no warranty.