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[InflatableMouse]

Someone please confirm, when import finishes and it says so-many files have been updated for external changes, it means it read new/different tags from the file and updated library fields to match, like the 'update library (from files)' option does, right?

Thanks.

[MrC]

I believe so.  My understanding is that MC checks the file's modified timestamp against its own Date Modified timestamp.  If the timestamps are different, MC re-reads the tags and updates the corresponding properties, including the Date Modified timestamp.

[rjm]

Doing a manual update with MC confirming that nothing changed is an excellent integrity test because it confirms that nothing unexpected changed within MC's library or the media files.

There are a huge number of things that could change due to MC bugs, hardware failures, or user errors, so getting that no changes detected message gives me a great deal of comfort and is the first test I do after updating MC.

[InflatableMouse]

Thanks guys!

Family discovered streaming so I had to disable remote client sync and authentication as I don't want them changing things. This means my own client is read only as well so I had to think of other ways to do maintenance.

My 'client' now imports the same media folder the server uses to its own library, but the server needs to pick up the changes I make. I need to make sure that if I change something like capitalization in tags but the location doesn't change that the server picks that up with an auto-import (including background).

So far it seems to do that but it needs to be reliable. Right now I'm randomly checking my changes against the server but its time consuming going back and forth.

[chrisjj]

Someone please confirm, when import finishes and it says so-many files have been updated for external changes, it means it read new/different tags from the file and updated library fields to match, like the 'update library (from files)' option does, right?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, IME - see Bug: Library Import can report non-existent external changes

[InflatableMouse]

Well, I'm afraid it doesn't work reliably.

It appears that when I update tags, they aren't always written to the files so even when I do an update library (from tags) on the server, the changes aren't picked up becuase they're simply not there.

This is a problem, I need to choose update files from library on my client to force changes to be written to file, then after an auto import, I need to update library from files.

This is too much work ...

[InflatableMouse]

And a problem with that method I just discovered. ... updating from 40,000 files makes MC unresponsive. Playback stopped a few minutes ago and MC hangs.

I'll let it run because Task Manager shows cpu and disk activity fluctuating.

Edit: it just released. Done updating I guess and music has started again.

[glynor]

And a problem with that method I just discovered. ... updating from 40,000 files makes MC unresponsive. Playback stopped a few minutes ago and MC hangs.

Yeah, pushing updates to disk (or pulling from disk) is an I/O intensive operation.  With 40k files being hit at once, it probably overwhelmed the IOps potential of your storage to keep up with both the thousands of tiny read/write requests, along with the playback, at the same time.

I've seen the same when I try to do updates on our sometimes incredibly slow SAN here at the office.

[InflatableMouse]

Yeh, maybe. I don't think MC would hit 40,000 files at once though but I get what you're saying.

The thing is, my workstation uses the same folder of files as the server, but as a network share. Workstation held all the changes in its own library so I did a update tags from library, 40,000 files was done in a few minutes over the network. No lockups, music played fine on both ends. Didn't break a sweat.

I then did the update library from files on the server (local), and it locked up, took twice as long too but the process didn't completely freeze, cpu, memory and disk utilization fluctuated continually. But disk throughput wasn't very high at all, averaging around 12MB/s when I looked. I didn't look at IOps or other fancy stats, I tend to forget I'm a system engineer when I'm at home . The files are read from a 5 2TB drive pool, the library sits on a Samsung 830 SSD drive.

I don't know ... maybe it was Drive Bender again. I used to blame aliens for unexplainable events, now its drive bender.

[glynor]

I don't know ... maybe it was Drive Bender again. I used to blame aliens for unexplainable events, now its drive bender.

The intersection of Drive Bender and cosmic rays.

It might have been something else, though... That is odd.  One little question, you mentioned the Library is on an 830.  I just had quite a bit of trouble with my new 840 Pro acting funny.  No bluescreens, but I was having weird performance slowdowns that seemed like disk, when they shouldn't have been disk.

Updated the firmware.  Problem gone.  Samsung has revved a bunch of their SSD firmwares recently, to deal with a few fairly serious problems (and then again to fix issues introduced by those changes).  I'm not sure if it impacted the older 830s, but you might want to check for a new firmware.

[InflatableMouse]

The intersection of Drive Bender and cosmic rays.

Or that. Glad you didn't mention solar flares. I don't believe in those.

Thanks for the link, firmware is latest though.

[chrisjj]

Doing a manual update with MC confirming that nothing changed is an excellent integrity test because it confirms that nothing unexpected changed within MC's library or the media files.

Is there any way to get an accurate confirmation that Import changed nothing?