SMB issue after August upgrade

Hi guys,
I just upgraded to new August 2021 Kodi 19.1 update on my Vero 4k. First of all compliments! The upgrade ran flawlessly and right after I skipped through some movies and music - all running without any issue - I was amazed that even UHD now runs without stutter / buffering and skipping to next chapter takes no time - even with 100 MBit Ethernet - wow!

However, after flipping through some stuff playback immediately stopped. Any attempt to play another movie or music failed. It showed buffering circle - that’s it. I restarted Vero, however, the issue remains - well sometimes it starts a video, after some seconds starts to stutter heavily, then hangs completely. I see high CPU load in this moment (Kodi 300%). I enabled debug logs, then tried to play another movie to record the issue. Within the logs it shows that it tries to connect to a reserved IP address: 255.2.0.0

2021-08-15 00:36:04.042 T:2581 INFO : Loading skin file: DialogVideoInfo.xml, load type: KEEP_IN_MEMORY
2021-08-15 00:36:05.168 T:2581 INFO : Loading skin file: DialogContextMenu.xml, load type: KEEP_IN_MEMORY
2021-08-15 00:36:07.044 T:2581 INFO : VideoPlayer::OpenFile: smb://synds/video/Movies/Lorem Ipsum.mkv
2021-08-15 00:36:07.050 T:2782 INFO : Creating InputStream
2021-08-15 00:36:07.395 T:2689 ERROR : DoWork - Direct texture file loading failed for special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/d/d120becc.jpg
2021-08-15 00:36:12.057 T:2782 ERROR : SMBDirectory->GetDirectory: Unable to open directory : ‘smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@255.2.0.0/video/Movies’
unix_err:‘6e’ error : ‘Connection timed out’
2021-08-15 00:36:12.057 T:2782 ERROR : GetDirectory - Error getting smb://synds/video/Movies/
2021-08-15 00:36:17.072 T:2782 ERROR : SMBDirectory->GetDirectory: Unable to open directory : ‘smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@255.2.0.0/video/Movies’
unix_err:‘6e’ error : ‘Connection timed out’
2021-08-15 00:36:17.073 T:2782 ERROR : GetDirectory - Error getting smb://synds/video/Movies/
2021-08-15 00:36:22.082 T:2782 INFO : SMBFile->Open: Unable to open file : ‘smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@255.2.0.0/video/Movies/Lorem Ipsum.mkv’
unix_err:‘6e’ error : ‘Connection timed out’
2021-08-15 00:36:22.083 T:2782 ERROR : CFileCache::Open - <smb://synds/video/Movies/Lorem Ipsum.mkv> failed to open
2021-08-15 00:36:22.083 T:2782 ERROR : CVideoPlayer::OpenInputStream - error opening [smb://synds/video/Movies/Lorem Ipsum.mkv]
2021-08-15 00:36:22.083 T:2782 INFO : CVideoPlayer::OnExit()
2021-08-15 00:36:22.124 T:2581 INFO : Loading skin file: DialogConfirm.xml, load type: KEEP_IN_MEMORY
2021-08-15 00:36:22.133 T:2581 INFO : CVideoPlayer::CloseFile()
2021-08-15 00:36:22.220 T:2581 INFO : VideoPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
2021-08-15 00:36:22.220 T:2581 INFO : VideoPlayer: finished waiting

I logged in to vero 4k via ssh and pinged “synds” - it’s working, DNS is resolving to the correct IP address.

Any ideas why in the log above synds is resolved to a reserved IP address?

Thanks for your help!

Kodi is notorious for having name resolution issues. Best bet is to just convert that source to IP rather than the name.

ok, but never ever had an issue with it before the August upgrade. Using the vero 4k for some years now.

ok, seems I resolved the issue by myself somehow. Only thing I’ve changed is to set the minimum SMB protocol to v2 in the Kodi services menu (no minimum was set before) . As my NAS has minimum set to v2, too, I am wondering how this could make a difference whatsoever.

However, I did some tests, all works well so far so let’s consider this issue as resolved for now!

Reopening this as the issue is back - it shows after letting the vero 4k run for some days. Out of a sudden, when selecting a movie it hangs for some seconds before showing the movie’s info page. In the logs I see this again:

ERROR : SMBDirectory->GetDirectory: Unable to open directory : ‘smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@255.2.0.0/video/Movie%20Concerts/Hunky%20Dory%20-%20The%20Start’
unix_err:‘6e’ error : ‘Connection timed out’
2021-08-24 20:52:45.779 T:3829 ERROR : GetDirectory - Error getting smb://synds/video/Movie Concerts/Hunky Dory - The Start/

Once I restart the vero 4k, the issue is gone for a while but comes back of some days of running idle.

I have to say: My NAS shuts down at night for a couple of hours while the Vero 4k is running 24/7. However, I did not have this issue before upgrading to the August release.

255.2.0.0 - what kind of an odd IP address is this by the way? Any clue where this comes from?

It’s the IP that synds is resolving to. I’m guessing that’s not the correct IP, so as a test, you could create an /etc/hosts entry to override DNS. From a command line:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

and add this line (replacing 192.168.1.x with the correct IP for synds)

192.168.1.x synds

and save the file. See if that helps you problem.

Well, as I mentioned in my original post - when I login to vero4k via Putty while the issue exists, I can ping synds - it is correctly resolved to the 192.x.y.z address. I am also wondering which DNS would ever resolve a hostname to a reserved IP address. The DNS in my case is my DSL router by the way (AVM Fritzbox).

Anyhow, I can surely give it a try to add synd to /etc/hosts. But as mentioned, I never ever had this issue before until upgrading to the August version - using vero4k for years.

Lookup can be a DNS lookup or NMB lookup. So maybe before it was using nmblookup. You can try to install sudo apt-get install samba-common-bin to see if that solves your issue.

ok, will try, thanks!

By the way, this is what I found in my /etc/hosts:

::1 osmc localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
127.0.1.1 osmc

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
~
While these are Ipv6 addresses, ff02::0 seems related to the odd 255.2.0.0 IPv4 address somehow?
Are the entries in my /etc/hosts correct? I am not using IPv6 in my LAN by the way.

Seems installing samba-common-bin as recommended by @fzinken did the trick. Closing this. Thanks!