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[sg27]

I am a rank beginner with Linux but a very long time user of MC on Windows.  I installed Ubuntu on an old Dell Inspiron 15 and successfully installed MC 33 for Linux.  MC worked fine until I tried to import my library from Windows in order to restore tags and playlists.  As I used to do in Windows with new installations, I used find and replace inside the Rename, Move and Copy function to change the file location tag from the music directory on my windows installation to the music directory on the Ubuntu installation.  Now, sometimes playback works fine and MC finds the file and other times it does not.  I have not been able to discern the difference between the two contexts.  Any ideas?  When I hover over a song in the Audio view, the file path appears correct.  It also appears correct in the Filename field of a song.

On an unrelated but really annoying note, whenever MC 33 opens a window after I have clicked on a menu item, the window is barely visible because it is so small.  I can drag the corner of the window so that I can make bigger.  Any way to fix this?

[Awesome Donkey]

Where are the files located? Internal drive? NAS? If it's a separate drive or NAS, how is it mounted? Through fstab?

On an unrelated but really annoying note, whenever MC 33 opens a window after I have clicked on a menu item, the window is barely visible because it is so small.  I can drag the corner of the window so that I can make bigger.  Any way to fix this?

Known quirk about MC on Linux, no workaround other than resizing when it happens unfortunately.

[zybex]

Please paste a sample file path for a file that doesn't work.
If you restored a Windows library backup, you should edit your platform.jmd file and change it to 'Linux' so that MC handles backslashes correctly. Not sure if you also need to replace \ to / on all files.

[bob]

Where are the files located? Internal drive? NAS? If it's a separate drive or NAS, how is it mounted? Through fstab?

Known quirk about MC on Linux, no workaround other than resizing when it happens unfortunately.

Steps to reproduce? Doesn't happen for me.

[Awesome Donkey]

If you mean the small windows, the easiest way is to use a distro that uses Wayland (it does happen in X11 too apparently, but I imagine it's harder to reproduce). Dialogs like the about dialog, the dialog that pops up when doing a library backup, etc. are usually where I see it the most.

[cochinada]

If you mean the small windows, the easiest way is to use a distro that uses Wayland (it does happen in X11 too apparently, but I imagine it's harder to reproduce). Dialogs like the about dialog, the dialog that pops up when doing a library backup, etc. are usually where I see it the most.

It has happening to me quite often in the last hour. What I'm doing is simply getting TV Show info from Internet and Cover art as well so I'm able to reproduce it easily in case you are interested.

[bob]

Oh, I see, I'm not using Wayland and I've never seen the behavior without that.
It's almost certainly a Wayland bug in it's X emulation. There might be a workaround though if you any of you have a 100% reproducable  scenario.

[Awesome Donkey]

It happens on X too, it's just Wayland somehow makes it easier to get it to happen.

[bob]

It has happening to me quite often in the last hour. What I'm doing is simply getting TV Show info from Internet and Cover art as well so I'm able to reproduce it easily in case you are interested.

And it's AFTER accessing a menu item?
Is the menu in the normal place on the window or has the desktop moved it?

[cochinada]

And it's AFTER accessing a menu item?
Is the menu in the normal place on the window or has the desktop moved it?

No. It happened a lot when I was using the right button click and option "Get Movie & TV Info..." or "Cover Art/Get from Internet". All right click options as you can check.
It didn't happened 100% but above 75% or so.
All this in Standard View with the MC window maximized.

[mwillems]

And it's AFTER accessing a menu item?
Is the menu in the normal place on the window or has the desktop moved it?

So Bob I see this about once or twice a month using Wayland, usually when I open a dialog that I haven't opened in a while.  It's usually roughly in the right "location" it's just tiny.  If I fix the window it generally stays fixed for a while, but then reverts eventually.  It happens when the dialog or menu is opened, not during interaction with the dialog or menu (it just spawns tiny).

I can't reliably reproduce it as I haven't figured out what triggers the reversion, but it seems to be a function of either time or maybe version upgrades?  For example, I might take benchmarks once or twice a year so almost every time I open the benchmark window it's tiny, but if I open it a few days after my last benchmark its always fine.  So my advice to reproduce would be to go to a wayland environment and try opening a bunch of different settings windows you haven't used in a while. 

EDIT:  In testing it looks like every second or third time I open the "Get Cover Art from the Internet" dialog it's tiny, so I'll second cochinada's suggestion of using that to reproduce the issue as it reliably fails here.  I hadn't noticed because I only use wayland on client machines where I don't do cover art operations.  It doesn't happen that frequently to most other windows although appears to affect almost every dialog window sometimes.

[sg27]

Thanks to everyone who responded.  I appreciate it.

The Dell laptop has two hard drives and came that way from Dell when I originally bought it as a Windows box.  Ubuntu is now the only operating system on the machine and it is running on the 124GB drive.  The music data is stored in a folder I called MC Music on a 1TB drive rather than in the default Ubuntu music folder.

I just booted up the laptop to grab the file path to post here and this time around Media Center is finding the files.  All I did after booting the machine was double click on Media Center icon in the left toolbar on the desktop to open the app.  Then I double clicked on several different songs including songs I know I had trouble with in the past and also other songs in the library. 

I then decided to restart the machine again to see what it would do and this time, literally minutes later, Media Center gave me the File Could Not Be Found error again on all songs.

So I exited Media Center, double clicked on the files folder and then reopened Media Center and it found the songs again.

Here's the path as seen in Media Center: \media\sophie\Data\JRMCMusic . When I look on the drive called Data to see the file path there of the audio file outside of Media Center, it is the same except for the slashes showing in the opposite direction.

Zydex, yes, it was a Windows library back up.  Can I edit platform.jmd after I have restored the library?  I did search and only found plaftorm.jmd in the zip file where I saved the library backup before installing it.

[zybex]

Yes, you can (and need to) edit the platform.jmd, but not the one in the ZIP file. You should find the actual folder where the library lives - check in ~/.jriver/Media Center 33/Library

[sg27]

Hi Zybex,
I went looking for the JRiver folder.  I discovered that inside the JRiver program files folder, there is both a folder called MC33 and a folder called Media Center 33.  Could this be the source of my problem?  In neither of them is there a platform.jmd file.

Should I have both of these folders, MC33 and Media Center 33?  Is this an artifact of trying to install a library backup from Windows?  There is no library folder in either the MC33 or Media Center 33 folder.

How do I resolve the lack of a platform.jmd file? 

[zybex]

Not sure if the linux install has both an MC33 and a Media Center 33 folder, it's possible. Or maybe you tried to install it twice?

The platform.jmd not missing, you just can't find it. The library folder contains many .jmd files (like the contents of that ZIP backup) - it has to be there somewhere. The ".jriver" folder may be hidden to you because it starts with a dot.

You can see the current path to your library in MC - click on the library name on the tree:

[Awesome Donkey]

There shouldn't be a MC33 folder, but then again I've never done an library backup from Windows to Linux.

One tip I have is to make sure you have hidden files enabled in the Files app in Ubuntu, otherwise you may not see some files. My only other tip would be to make sure to never start mediacenter33 with sudo or su or anything like that, as that can and will cause issues.

The platform.jmd file should be located here:



If you're not opposed to starting over with MC, you could clear the existing library and re-import the library backup. Instead this time open the library backup .zip file, open the platform.jmd file in a text editor and change the contents from [Platform]=Windows to [Platform]=Linux and save it and make sure it's in the .zip file and then import that. If you're unable to do that, you could upload your library backup here and I can make the platform modification for you.

[sg27]

Yes, Awesome Donkey & Zybex, I am starting to think I should uninstall MC33 and start over.  What's the best way to thoroughly uninstall MC 33 fully so that all of these files are properly deleted including these multiple program files?  I'm thinking about how messy and incomplete uninstall can be in Windows.

[bob]

There shouldn't be a MC33 folder, but then again I've never done an library backup from Windows to Linux.

One tip I have is to make sure you have hidden files enabled in the Files app in Ubuntu, otherwise you may not see some files. My only other tip would be to make sure to never start mediacenter33 with sudo or su or anything like that, as that can and will cause issues.

The platform.jmd file should be located here:



If you're not opposed to starting over with MC, you could clear the existing library and re-import the library backup. Instead this time open the library backup .zip file, open the platform.jmd file in a text editor and change the contents from [Platform]=Windows to [Platform]=Linux and save it and make sure it's in the .zip file and then import that. If you're unable to do that, you could upload your library backup here and I can make the platform modification for you.

The MC33 "folder" in /usr/lib/jriver is not a folder, it's a symlink to the Media Center 33 folder. It's necessary for the main program and the libraries to find each other. You should NOT remove it!

[sg27]

I edited platform.jmd to Linux and restarted the machine.  Now, I am getting the file not found error.  What's the best way to uninstall MC 33 and start over?

[Awesome Donkey]

Delete the .jriver folder in the Home directory, though you could move it to another directory like Downloads so it's backed up, just in case.

[bob]

When you delete the .jriver/Media Center 33 folder, if you were running on a trial you will lose it and have to install the license.

[sg27]

Okay.  I have successfully reinstalled Media Center with my license key and it appears to run fine.  After importing my music, I tried restoring the library with the platform.jmd file edited before restore to indicate Linux instead of Windows.  I verified in the .jriver/Media Center 33/Library folder that platform.jmd as installed indeed says Linux. 

Attached is a screen shot of what happens when I try to do a find & replace to change the file path.  It looks like the find and replace is insisting on pointing to the default Linux music directory which is not where my music library lives.  I have attached an image of the screenshot since I don't know how to post an image here in this message.  If you look at the Replace With path, you will see it's different than the New file path in the Preview box.  Is this a bug or a feature? ?

[zybex]

That's just a default, you need to enter whatever you require.

- select "Update Database to point to new location" on the dropdown
- uncheck the "Directories" and "Filename" boxes, leave just "Find and Replace"
- Find What: enter your previous C: folder path, like "C:\Music" or "C:\users\sophie\Music"
- Replace with: enter your new path on that Linux install, like "/media/sophie/music"

Check the Preview panel to make sure it will do the right thing.

You may also need to do another replace of \ to / on all files (not sure if that's needed)

Also, you don't need to import your music before doing a DB restore - the restore will just replace all your imported files anyway. You can do a restore on a blank library, then do the Rename to point the restored files to the new location.

[Awesome Donkey]

When doing the find and replace, do it on a few files first then try to play one to see if they function correctly.

[sg27]

I was able to restore the library and change the properties to point to the correct Linux filename.  After I did it, I was able to play songs.  Then, I restarted the machine and restarted MC 33 and got the file not found error again.  I wonder if there is something going on at the system level.  What logs might help me track down what's happening?

[Awesome Donkey]

Where are the files located? On an external device like hard drive or NAS or something like that? If so, you're going to have to set up automounting via the /etc/fstab file.

For a SMB NAS I wrote a mini-tutorial here to get it mounted on every boot in the OS: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,140239.msg972841.html#msg972841

[sg27]

Hi Awesome Donkey.  The files are on an internal drive different from the drive where Ubuntu is installed.

[sg27]

Okay.  I was able to produce two log files inside MC33.  Rockville Found is a log file when MC33 found and played Don't Go Back To Rockville.  I rebooted the laptop and went back into MC33, reset the log file and then tried to play Don't Go Back To Rockville and it failed.  Rockville Not Found is that log file. Any ideas?

[bob]

Hi Awesome Donkey.  The files are on an internal drive different from the drive where Ubuntu is installed.

Spinner or SSD?

[sg27]

Toshiba MQ01ABD100 1000 GB Internal - spinner

[mwillems]

So one question that OP has never answered is how the internal drive is actually mounted in software.  We know it's not the OS drive, so there's no guarantee it's actually automounted on boot.  Here's a theory of the case and tell me if you think this could be you:

1) The drive is not mounted in the fstab (or is listed in the fstab, but has an option flag that prevents automounting on boot)
2) When you reboot and try to play in JRiver the file appears unavailable because the drive isn't mounted.
3) You then open your file manager which then detects and automagically mounts the drive like a removable drive.  Because this is transparent to you, the files look like they've been there the whole time.
4) What happens if you go back to JRiver MC and try to play a file *after* you've navigated to the files in your file manager on any given boot?

If the answer to 4) is "the file plays" then my hunch is right and you might just need to actually mount the drive on boot in your fstab.  If the answer to 4) is the file is still unavailable in MC, what steps do you normally go through to get things playing in MC?

Alternatively, reboot and then (before doing anything else) run the terminal command "lsblk" and post the output here.  Also post the contents of the file at /etc/fstab

[sg27]

Here's the lsblk output taken immediately after reboot.  It looks like the drive is mounting.  Here is fstab.  For testing purposes, I am simply opening MC33, finding Rockville through the search box and clicking play.

[mwillems]

Here's the lsblk output taken immediately after reboot.  It looks like the drive is mounting. 

Just the opposite, your lsblk shows that your extra drive is not actually mounting on boot at all.  The lsblk shows the disks that exist in the left column and the mountpoints in the far right column. The only physical disk partitions that are mounted are two partitions on /dev/sda (i.e. your root and boot partitions).  By contrast /dev/sdb (which is probably your second internal drive) has one partition that is not mounted anywhere.  Which makes sense because your second drive has no entry in the fstab: the only drives in the fstab are the root and boot partitions for the OS drive.

So your problem is almost certainly that your internal drive is not being automatically mounted on boot (only when you try to browse to it in the OS file manager).  You should add your drive to the fstab so that it mounts automatically on boot, which should solve your issue. 

[sg27]

Great.  It sounds like we have found the problem.  How do I fix it?  I am very new to linux.

[mwillems]

Great.  It sounds like we have found the problem.  How do I fix it?  I am very new to linux.

Type the command "sudo blkid"  That will return a series of lines one for each device and partition.  You want to find the line that starts with "/dev/sdb1" and then copy the long alphanumeric value following "UUID" on that line.  Also make a note of what the "TYPE" value is for that line.

Then open your /etc/fstab for editing by typing "sudo nano /etc/fstab"

Add a new line at the bottom being careful not to change any of the previous lines.  On that new line you need to add something like the below, but replacing the placeholders below with the correct information for your system:

Code: [Select]

UUID=placeholder-for-your-UUID-from-blkid   /placeholder/for/desired/mount/path/   placeholder-for-TYPE-from-BLKID   defaults   0   1
As an example, a line from my fstab looks like this (do not copy and paste this you need to use the correct data for your system instead of what I have below!):

Code: [Select]

UUID=a18c7092-a223-40dd-a4c3-4ced0ac1fdfe   /mnt/media   ext4   defaults   0   1
Once you have added the correct line for your system, make sure everything is correct and then press CTRL+S and then CTRL+X.  Then test the mount by typing the following and making sure to enter the path you put in the fstab as the place to mount the drive:

Code: [Select]

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo mount /placeholder/for/desired/mount/path
If it mounts correctly and you can see the files, you should be safe to reboot.  If not, go back and check your fstab to make sure it's correct.

Assuming it's all correct, on your next boot, the drive at /dev/sdb1 should be mounted automatically at the path you included in the fstab.

[sg27]

MCWillems, thanks for the detailed instructions. 

So if this is my result from my blkid:

/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Data" UUID="57521c67-3776-45c7-ae16-8b038b18cbb4" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="00009cf1-ead0-6342-c96b-db01e2390100"

Is this line correct to add to my fstab?
UUID="57521c67-3776-45c7-ae16-8b038b18cbb4     /mnt/media   ext4  defaults 0 1

[bob]

Type the command "sudo blkid"  That will return a series of lines one for each device and partition.  You want to find the line that starts with "/dev/sdb1" and then copy the long alphanumeric value following "UUID" on that line.  Also make a note of what the "TYPE" value is for that line.

Then open your /etc/fstab for editing by typing "sudo nano /etc/fstab"

Add a new line at the bottom being careful not to change any of the previous lines.  On that new line you need to add something like the below, but replacing the placeholders below with the correct information for your system:

Code: [Select]

UUID=placeholder-for-your-UUID-from-blkid   /placeholder/for/desired/mount/path/   placeholder-for-TYPE-from-BLKID   defaults   0   1
As an example, a line from my fstab looks like this (do not copy and paste this you need to use the correct data for your system instead of what I have below!):

Code: [Select]

UUID=a18c7092-a223-40dd-a4c3-4ced0ac1fdfe   /mnt/media   ext4   defaults   0   1
Once you have added the correct line for your system, make sure everything is correct and then press CTRL+S and then CTRL+X.  Then test the mount by typing the following and making sure to enter the path you put in the fstab as the place to mount the drive:

Code: [Select]

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo mount /placeholder/for/desired/mount/path
If it mounts correctly and you can see the files, you should be safe to reboot.  If not, go back and check your fstab to make sure it's correct.

Assuming it's all correct, on your next boot, the drive at /dev/sdb1 should be mounted automatically at the path you included in the fstab.

Shouldn't he specify the uid and gid on mount so it's writable by the user?
or use the user option added to defaults?

[Awesome Donkey]

If you need a GUI and you're using Ubuntu, you can open GNOME's Disks app and manage it from there too so it's automounts on boot.

[mwillems]

MCWillems, thanks for the detailed instructions. 

So if this is my result from my blkid:

/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Data" UUID="57521c67-3776-45c7-ae16-8b038b18cbb4" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="00009cf1-ead0-6342-c96b-db01e2390100"

Is this line correct to add to my fstab?
UUID="57521c67-3776-45c7-ae16-8b038b18cbb4     /mnt/media   ext4  defaults 0 1

That looks correct to me, but make sure a) that an empty directory already exists at /mnt/media and that it is accessible for your user, and then b) after adding the line to your fstab run the mount test I described in my previous post to make sure it mounts correctly before you reboot.

You can see if the directory exists and its permissions by typing

Code: [Select]

ls -la /mnt

Shouldn't he specify the uid and gid on mount so it's writable by the user?
or use the user option added to defaults?

So you definitely need those options for remote or network mounts (because the remote drive permissions need to be mapped to a local user/group), but I've never used uid/gid mount options for mounting *local* disks and have no trouble accessing things.  They do need to make sure the mountpoint (/mnt/media) is user accessible, but that's about it for local drives in my experience. 

If you need a GUI and you're using Ubuntu, you can open GNOME's Disks app and manage it from there too so it's automounts on boot.

I didn't realize Gnome Disks allowed you to permanently change mount options.  That's good to know.  I just clicked around and didn't see how to do it, which sub menu is it in?