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[sirganty]

Hi guys,

I am having an unusual problem with my "samba shared" media library.

My media is all stored on an eSata Raid enclosure attached to a mac in the office (formatted as exFat for easy swapping between OSs).

I then share this drive using samba (proper samba, not the crippled version that ships with OSX).

In my various MC installs around the house, I then create local libraries pointing to various folders on this share using unc paths.

I noticed the other day that things started disappearing from my libraries, broken links, failed to play etc.
Although at the same time, I was still able to browse to the these files using explorer from that exact same machine.

My immediate thought was I will simply clear a library and try to repopulate.

This process now also has issues :-(

I clear a library on the main htpc, re-add the UNC shares, and then run auto-import now.

about 25% of the files are added in the first pass, the other 75% "fail to import"
So I run auto-import again.
Another 10% of the files are added, a few of the original 25% are "fixed" (removed), 65% failed to import.
Run it again, another 10% are added, a few removed etc etc
You get the idea.

This is strange.

I turned off "fix broken links", cleared the library and started again.
Exactly the same, except the "fixed" (removed) part no longer happens.
But now I notice that some of the imported files now have the "missing" image against them.

So I tried again, this time mapping the UNC paths to drives on the machine.
Exactly the same symptoms.

If I keep running auto-import over and over, I do eventually get to a point where most of the files are in the library, but I then still get a large number of temporary "missing" links, or failed to play a file, but a few seconds later they are fine again.

The machine I'm testing on is wired (gigabit all round) to my network, as is the MAC that is serving the shares.

I have run some speed testing on the shares (just copying files around of different sizes) from this machine, and get a fairly constant 100MB/s, occasionally dropping to 70MB/s, and no failures.

I'm confused.
Anyone have any expertise in networking / samba and jriver?

[MrC]

No experience here, but there was a recent change:

18.0.114 (1/14/2013)

4. Fixed: Caching of drive availability could lead to a case where auto-import would incorrectly remove a file on a hard drive that comes and goes (like a USB drive with a power  switch, etc.).

Do you have at least the .114 build?

The only other thing that I noticed was the FAT file system - I think its time stamps have different granularity.  There have been some changes in auto-import so I wonder if anyone is testing against FAT?

[sirganty]

I'm running .106 at the minute (latest stable)

I've switched my update preferences to "latest" and the download has started.

Worth a shot. Well spotted

[sirganty]

So I'm now running .120 and still the same issue.

Its probably worth noting that whenever I run the auto-import, it always "finds" the right number of files, it just fails to import the majority of them.

And that I've also checked the samba logs on the server end, and it simply reports successful connections / browsing activity and there are no errors reported that end.

[MrC]

Any logging in MC that might be useful (Help > Logging)?

[sirganty]

well the logs seem to be saying that it cant open the file when analysing.

i'm getting alot of

Import: JRAnalyzer::AddFileJRWorkerExe: Result: 4294967295 (0 is success)

Import: ImportNewFiles:     Failed to analyze / add (changed recently)

Playback: DShowVideoGraph::Render: Start
Playback: DShowVideoGraph::ConnectSourceAndSplitter: Start
Playback: DShowVideoGraph::ConnectSourceAndSplitter: Failed attempting to open file: {file that was found but not added}
Playback: DShowVideoGraph::ConnectSourceAndSplitter: Failed to open or parse file.  (hr=0x80004005)
Playback: DShowVideoGraph::ConnectSourceAndSplitter: Finish (15 ms)
Playback: DShowVideoGraph::Render: Error: source / splitter did not expose output pins.

i can provide a full log if its useful?

[sirganty]

But the files are all in the same parent directory, are accessed with the same account and on an 'un-permissioned' drive: exFat, so it doesn't seem to make sense that one thread has enough permissions to open, analyse and add, but another doesn't.

[sirganty]

Finally figured it out.

I hadn't connected the two events as they seemed too far apart to be linked, but I realised I had created a new samba share on the drive for network backups a little while back.

It appears rather foolishly I used a GUI tool to edit my Samba conf file rather than getting my hands dirty in terminal.
This GUI tool (SMBup) seemed to have added a lot of unnecessary options and settings into various existing shares & server settings as well as add my new share, and I think they were tripping over each other especially with regards permissions.

I cleared out my samba config, and recreated it manually in a nice clean fashion, et voila, samba working perfectly again, and JRiver able to add / play all my media.

Happy days.
Thanks for letting me sound off somewhere... it helps clear the head!