Running miniDLNA on OpenBSD 7.8 — rcctl broken, here's the workaround
Hey everyone,
Just got miniDLNA running stable on OpenBSD 7.8 after quite a battle. Sharing my findings in case others hit the same issues.
The Problem
rcctl start minidlna reports ok but immediately rcctl check minidlna returns failed. The service never creates a PID file and dies silently. This seems to be a known issue with the rc script on OpenBSD 7.8 — possibly related to the unveil/pledge restrictions in the package.
Root Causes Found
rcctl broken — minidlna's rc script doesn't work reliably on 7.8
unveil restrictions — media paths outside /var/db/minidlna are blocked when running as daemon
Don't use -d flag — it prevents self-daemonization and causes instability
Corrupt/incomplete media files — minidlna crashes scanning bad metadata
Working Solution
Create symlinks so media paths are within unveil scope:
ln -sf /data/media/videos /var/db/minidlna/videos
ln -sf /data/media/music /var/db/minidlna/music
ln -sf /data/media/photos /var/db/minidlna/photos
media_dir=V,/var/db/minidlna/videos
media_dir=A,/var/db/minidlna/music
media_dir=P,/var/db/minidlna/photos
friendly_name=MyServer
db_dir=/var/db/minidlna
log_dir=/var/log
port=8200
inotify=no
notify_interval=60
/etc/login.conf — increase openfiles limit:
minidlna:\
:openfiles=4096:\\
:tc=daemon:
cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf
/etc/rc.conf.local:
minidlna_class=minidlna
/etc/rc.local — bypass rcctl entirely:
#!/bin/sh
mkdir -p /var/run/minidlna
chown _minidlna:_minidlna /var/run/minidlna
/usr/local/sbin/minidlnad \
-f /etc/minidlna.conf \
-P /var/run/minidlna/minidlna.pid \
-u _minidlna
Key insight: Without -d, minidlna self-daemonizes with PPID=1 — stable and boot-persistent. With -d it stays in foreground and dies when the shell exits.
Verify it's running correctly:
ps -p $(pgrep minidlnad | head -1) -o pid,ppid,command
# PPID should be 1
Hope this saves someone the hours I spent on it!
OpenBSD 7.8 · miniDLNA 1.3.3