/rclone_serve_dlna

title: "rclone serve dlna"
description: "Serve remote:path over DLNA"
versionIntroduced: v1.46
# autogenerated - DO NOT EDIT, instead edit the source code in cmd/serve/dlna/ and as part of making a release run "make commanddocs"

> **Official documentation:** [https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_serve_dlna/](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_serve_dlna/)

rclone serve dlna

Serve remote:path over DLNA

Synopsis

Run a DLNA media server for media stored in an rclone remote. Many devices, such as the Xbox and PlayStation, can automatically discover this server in the LAN and play audio/video from it. VLC is also supported. Service discovery uses UDP multicast packets (SSDP) and will thus only work on LANs.

Rclone will list all files present in the remote, without filtering based on media formats or file extensions. Additionally, there is no media transcoding support. This means that some players might show files that they are not able to play back correctly.

Rclone will add external subtitle files (.srt) to videos if they have the same filename as the video file itself (except the extension), either in the same directory as the video, or in a "Subs" subdirectory.

Server options

Use `--addr` to specify which IP address and port the server should listen on, e.g. `--addr 1.2.3.4:8000` or `--addr :8080` to listen to all IPs.

Use `--name` to choose the friendly server name, which is by default "rclone (hostname)".

Use `--log-trace` in conjunction with `-vv` to enable additional debug logging of all UPNP traffic.

VFS - Virtual File System

This command uses the VFS layer. This adapts the cloud storage objects that rclone uses into something which looks much more like a disk filing system.

Cloud storage objects have lots of properties which aren't like disk files - you can't extend them or write to the middle of them, so the VFS layer has to deal with that. Because there is no one right way of doing this there are various options explained below.

The VFS layer also implements a directory cache - this caches info about files and directories (but not the data) in memory.

VFS Directory Cache

Using the `--dir-cache-time` flag, you can control how long a directory should be considered up to date and not refreshed from the backend. Changes made through the VFS will appear immediately or invalidate the cache.

    --dir-cache-time duration   Time to cache directory entries for (default 5m0s)
    --poll-interval duration    Time to wait between polling for changes. Must be smaller than dir-cache-time. Only on supported remotes. Set to 0 to disable (default 1m0s)

However, changes made directly on the cloud storage by the web interface or a different copy of rclone will only be picked up once the directory cache expires if the backend configured does not support polling for changes. If the backend supports polling, changes will be picked up within the polling interval.

You can send a `SIGHUP` signal to rclone for it to flush all directory caches, regardless of how old they are. Assuming only one rclone instance is running, you can reset the cache like this:

kill -SIGHUP $(pidof rclone)

If you configure rclone with a [remote control](/rc) then you can use rclone rc to flush the whole directory cache:

rclone rc vfs/forget

Or individual files or directories:

rclone rc vfs/forget file=path/to/file dir=path/to/dir

VFS File Buffering

The `--buffer-size` flag determines the amount of memory, that will be used to buffer data in advance.

Each open file will try to keep the specified amount of data in memory at all times. The buffered data is bound to one open file and won't be shared.

This flag is a upper limit for the used memory per open file. The buffer will only use memory for data that is downloaded but not not yet read. If the buffer is empty, only a small amount of memory will be used.

The maximum memory used by rclone for buffering can be up to `--buffer-size * open files`.

VFS File Caching

These flags control the VFS file caching options. File caching is necessary to make the VFS layer appear compatible with a normal file system. It can be disabled at the cost of some compatibility.

For example you'll need to enable VFS caching if you want to read and write simultaneously to a file. See below for more details.

Note that the VFS cache is separate from the cache backend and you may find that you need one or the other or both.

    --cache-dir string                     Directory rclone will use for caching.
    --vfs-cache-mode CacheMode             Cache mode off|minimal|writes|full (default off)
    --vfs-cache-max-age duration           Max time since last access of objects in the cache (default 1h0m0s)
    --vfs-cache-max-size SizeSuffix        Max total size of objects in the cache (default off)
    --vfs-cache-min-free-space SizeSuffix  Target minimum free space on the disk containing the cache (default off)
    --vfs-cache-poll-interval duration     Interval to poll the cache for stale objects (default 1m0s)
    --vfs-write-back duration              Time to writeback files after last use when using cache (default 5s)

If run with `-vv` rclone will print the location of the file cache. The files are stored in the user cache file area which is OS dependent but can be controlled with `--cache-dir` or setting the appropriate environment variable.

The cache has 4 different modes selected by `--vfs-cache-mode`. The higher the cache mode the more compatible rclone becomes at the cost of using disk space.

Note that files are written back to the remote only when they are closed and if they haven't been accessed for `--vfs-write-back` seconds. If rclone is quit or dies with files that haven't been uploaded, these will be uploaded next time rclone is run with the same flags.

If using `--vfs-cache-max-size` or `--vfs-cache-min-free-space` note that the cache may exceed these quotas fo