UPnP upon initial start up not found until “special” restart

Due to possible coincidences but strange behaviour from Kodi as well, I have no idea if this is an OS issue or a Kodi issue, which is why I’m asking here.

My last update included both a swathe of Mint 18 Cinnamon (debian-based) updates on my Gigabyte Brix i5-6200 as well as Kodi Krypton. I’ve been using my Synology NAS’ DLNA/UPnP server for years now with my smart TV and recently with Kodi Jarvis. All was fine, accessing the DLNA server was never an issue. The Kodi server would be started up/shutdown based on the TV being switched on (sensed by a general purpose server over a ping test) – wake on LAN for the on sequence and kodi-send command application for the graceful power down sequence.

Since the update though, I find that upon powering up the unit, I am unable to access the DLNA server – Kodi reports “No connection to server” (paraphrasing). Rebooting does not resolve the matter either.

What does resolve it for all the time powered up, is to edit the DLNA source details in Kodi, hit “Browse” without touching anything else and it then automatically restarts Kodi with no issues connecting to the DLNA server thereafter.

This is why I’m confused as to whether or not it’s a Linux issue (given all the updates that had come through but didn’t take any notes other than remembering the kernel was one of those updates) or a Kodi issue (given the little workaround I mentioned seems to cure it for as long as it remains up and running). I have not set up Kodi with any SMB drives and whatnot, to see if that will make any difference. Despite never having had that set up on my old Jarvis installation, I’m thinking of giving that a try tonight.

Has anyone else come across this phenomenon? Is it similar to what was suggested in this thread that I found in my searches: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=154808

Many thanks in advance.