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Author Topic: Library Problem - cause found  (Read 1702 times)

bblue

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Library Problem - cause found
« on: May 04, 2013, 02:47:21 pm »

Ok, this has now happened to me four times over the last couple of weeks, the fourth was just now and I was 100% clear what I had been doing and what I did to set this off.

I have one library of approximately 48,000 audio titles.  There are three playlists; ALL Playlist, MAIN Playlist, OLDIES Playlist.  ALL has everything, MAIN has everything from approximately 1980 to present, and OLDIES has everything from 50's to early 80's.  There are approximately 20k entries in each of MAIN and OLDIES.  I move things between playlists to organize which stream should play them.  I never delete native files, which are all FLAC from 44k to 192k and 16 or 24 bit depth.

In each of the four cases, I've had all of one specific playlist name removed from the entire database, causing me major amounts of time to reconstruct.  Yes, I do backups and that has helped, but it's still easy to chalk up hours of work between daily (or more often) backups.

Just a few minutes ago, I had selected a single entry in the Oldies Playing Now list, to remove that entry from the OLDIES category.  There was a pause, and EVERY Playlist field record had OLDIES Playlist removed in the entire database.

The Playlist Field would typically look something like this:

ALL Playlist;MAIN Playlist;OLDIES Playlist for an entry that should appear in three playlists, or ALL Playlist;MAIN Playlist for an entry that would appear in the MAIN playlist.  ALL Playlist is never played, it's just a list for browsing and placing entries.

I usually have each Playlist locked, but at the time this happened, OLDIES Playlist was unlocked because I had reordered the numbering a few minutes prior.  I don't know if being locked would have prevented this from happening or not.

The library file contents are all on two local hard drives, across four directory hierarchies.  There never seems to be issues with the ALL Playlist and the total library contents, only the derived Playlists.  But when this happens the behavior remains the same.  Some presumably innocuous single removal wipes out a whole playlist.

In this case I had ALL Playlist open in a window, and the Playing Now copy of OLDIES Playlist in another window.  It was in that window where I unchecked the Playlist entry for the OLDIES Playlist that wiped out the entire list.

PLEASE tell me this is rare but known and a fix is forthcoming, not that I'm the only one experiencing it.

I have been able to add the OLDIES Playing Now List to add back all the OLDIES Playlist selections that it knows about, but it was several hours behind today's changes.

--Bill
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bblue

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Re: SERIOUS Library Problem
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2013, 03:07:06 pm »

Another oddity which is happening.  After selecting the Playing Now Oldies list in its entirety and adding them to the OLDIES Playlist, I imported the most recent backup (export) of the OLDIES Playlist.  Now in the playlist field there are two entries for OLDIES Playlist, like so:

OLDIES Playlist;ALL Playlist;OLDIES Playlist

If I single one out while in either the ALL or OLDIES playlist, and uncheck the OLDIES Playlist checkbox, only one of the Playlist field entries clears out, and the checkbox is clear.  But the Playlists field still shows:

OLDIES Playlist;ALL Playlist

What's up with that?

--Bill
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glynor

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Re: SERIOUS Library Problem
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2013, 03:25:46 pm »

Are you doing these edits while a Library Client might be connected elsewhere?

I've seen other Playlist-related oddity (though not for a while) when doing edits with a Library Server client copy of MC connected.
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bblue

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Re: SERIOUS Library Problem
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2013, 03:49:58 pm »

Are you doing these edits while a Library Client might be connected elsewhere?

I've seen other Playlist-related oddity (though not for a while) when doing edits with a Library Server client copy of MC connected.

No, no client connected.  This is all being done on a local workstation at the main MC server.  I had turned on the logging a couple of days ago, so inadvertently captured this event.  Maybe one of the developers can take a look at it and see what might have happened.

I've seen this behavior over the last three versions (back to .172 I believe).  Could have even been before that but it was before I realized I wasn't doing something that specifically might cause this (no bug).

--Bill
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bblue

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Re: Library Problem
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2013, 09:18:34 am »

No one else with comments about the disappearing playlist issue?  It's hard to imagine that no one else has experienced this, since it's rather commonplace here.

Who could I send a logfile of the times surrounding the error, for review?

--Bill
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bblue

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Re: Library Problem - cause found
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2013, 03:10:23 pm »

I've just had another entire playlist disappear while doing what appeared to be simple editing of songs in the playlist.

Here's what happens. 

I have one library with three major playlists, Oldies, All, Main.   The All list is everything in the library.  There are overlaps between them (but that isn't relevant).

So you have the All Playlist loaded and are moving tracks between playlists, or adding or removing a track from a playlist.  Most of the time this all goes swimmingly.  But now you've got one track selected that is one that you want to remove from the system, or at least all playlists. So you go to the lower left corner Playlists window and uncheck the box for All Playlists.  The screen flashes slightly (redraw I think), scrolls a little bit, and the track becomes de-selected but you don't see it.  The next box you uncheck will delete the entire playlist that you selected!

The bug is that with no tracks selected it's the same as if EVERYTHING is selected!  So you can easily wipe out an entire playlist!

I don't think the system should allow a complete de-selection of tracks to occur like this.  Technically, because you incorrectly unchecked the All Playlist, it removed the originally selected file from it, but then left no selection.  It probably should have selected the previous or next track in the list as sorted.

Yes, it's user error, ultimately.  But the software should help out to prevent major things like this from happening.  A secondary possible solution would be to prompt the user if over x number of tracks would be deleted as a result of the action.

But PLEASE, could something be implemented to prevent this from happening?

Thanks.

--Bill
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kewe65

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Re: Library Problem
« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2013, 11:31:13 am »

I am having this problem.  it appears to happen when i do an upgrade.  it wipes out all the standard playlists.

No one else with comments about the disappearing playlist issue?  It's hard to imagine that no one else has experienced this, since it's rather commonplace here.

Who could I send a logfile of the times surrounding the error, for review?

--Bill

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