Reinstall Problems

[phred]

I've been using Subsonic since v4.0.1 and never experienced the problem I'm currently having with reinstallation. I've previously run it on WinXP and am currently on Win7. The server (6.1.1) behaved normally up until about a month ago. My music resides on a NAS. Subsonic is scheduled to auto-scan every day at 1800.

About a month ago I was making some changes to the tags on the albums via another application (MusicBee) which also has always behaved as expected. I noticed that for the albums that I had changed, there were now two occurrences showing when accessing the server via the web (Firefox.) [s]I also noted that new tracks added to playlists were not being updated by Subsonic. The playlists live on the Win7 machine and are in PLS format, which hasn't been an issue before.[/s]

I finally got fed up with seeing the duplicate albums and uninstalled 6.1.1 (which lives at d:\subsonic.) I also found a subsonic directory on the c:\ drive, which I deleted manually. I then reinstalled 6.1.1, set up one user, and scanned the media directory. Amazingly, even though I had removed what I assume were the database files at c:\subsonic, the duplicates still existed. I uninstalled, and deleted, everything again. Then searched the registry for anything 'subsonic' and there was nothing. I then reinstalled v5.3. I did a scan and subsonic came up empty, even though the scanner dialog showed 23+k files. -And- only one playlist (there should be about 80) showed up and it showed zero tracks.

Checking the log I see this after the media scan:

Code: Select all

[2017-09-02 12:23:38,055] INFO MediaScannerService - Scanned media library with 23500 entries.
[2017-09-02 12:23:38,055] INFO MediaScannerService - Marking non-present files.
[2017-09-02 12:23:38,960] INFO MediaScannerService - Marking non-present artists.
[2017-09-02 12:23:38,975] INFO MediaScannerService - Marking non-present albums.
[2017-09-02 12:23:39,022] INFO MediaScannerService - Completed media library scan.


The "marking non-present..." is confusing to me. Does that mean it marked -every-thing as not present? And if so, why?

As for the playlists, the log shows that there are "no songs in the playlist were found" when a manual check of the playlists shows valid entries.

I performed an 'upgrade' to 6.1.1, ran a scan and there was no change.

Needless to say this is very frustrating. I'd appreciate any advice as to a) completely clear out the database (I don't mind starting from scratch with configuring users, etc.) and b) get a good, accurate scan without the duplicates.

Thanks.

[phred]

UPDATE: Making some progress with the playlists. I changed the path of each track within the playlists from \\NAS-1\Music_Files to \\192.168.1.2\Music_Files and they all scanned. Of course they can't play because all the tracks are still missing. I tried the same change with the Media Folder, but so far it's still not seeing the tracks.

[phred]

UPDATE 2: Looking good. I was able to get the media folder scan to complete successfully and show all the albums. Apparently it was due to my error in not selecting "Music" in the Users setup under "Allow access to these media folders." I'm now back to where I was a month ago with duplicate entries for the same albums showing up. There are also a couple of albums that appear three times, two with the same artwork and one different.

As you can see from this screenshot, the first and fourth album are the same. As is the second and third. There is only one copy of each on the NAS. Each of the duplicates shows the same number of tracks. The tags for album artist, artist, album, year, and genre are the same within each album. This is a real head-scratcher.

[phred]

Bump.

Anyone have any ideas on how to rid the library of duplicates? And of albums that no longer exist but still appear in Subsonic? This is really getting annoying.

[phred]

I'm somewhat shocked (and greatly disappointed) that no one has offered a suggestion for this problem.

Even if one has never experienced this behavior before someone must have an idea as to how to get rid of it.

[Jägs]

I don't have a solution for the dupes, but for those that no longer exist, if you go to Settings and click on "Clean-up database," that should delete any entry from the DB that has no association to a file.

[phred]

Thanks for the reply Jags, but 'clean up database' doesn't help the issue. Nor does this, which I found in this forum some time ago:

Go to your Subsonic instance’s database configuration page —
http://yoursubsonicinstall/db.view. Once here, paste the following into
the text box:

DELETE FROM ALBUM;
DELETE FROM ARTIST;
DELETE FROM BOOKMARK;
DELETE FROM MEDIA_FILE;
DELETE FROM MUSIC_FILE_INFO;
DELETE FROM PLAYER;
DELETE FROM PLAYER_TRANSCODING;
DELETE FROM PLAYER_TRANSCODING2;
DELETE FROM PLAYLIST;
DELETE FROM PLAYLIST_FILE;
DELETE FROM PLAYLIST_USER;
DELETE FROM SHARE;
DELETE FROM SHARE_FILE;
DELETE FROM STARRED_ARTIST;
DELETE FROM STARRED_ALBUM;
DELETE FROM STARRED_MEDIA_FILE;
DELETE FROM TRANSCODING;
DELETE FROM TRANSCODING2;
DELETE FROM USER_RATING;

Click the Submit button and wait patiently. When this operation is
complete, go back to the index page of your Subsonic instance, click
Settings, Media Folders, then Clean-up database. Once complete, re-scan
the library; all of your issues should now be solved without losing your
user settings.

This has worked in the past, but not any longer.

As stated previously, a complete and total un/reinstall doesn't remove the duplicates. But the duplicates simply do not exist. I checked and double checked MusicBee, which I'm using as my music/tag manager. And the dupes don't show up in Squeezebox.

[Jägs]

I'm no expert on the ins and outs of Subsonic, but if you are doing a complete reinstall--not preserving the DB or anything--and the dupes are appearing after a rescan, I think Occam's razor kicks in and the issue is that you have duplicates somewhere. Perhaps they are in a hidden folder somewhere?

Since you're digging around in the DB, anyway, you should check out the paths to the duplicate albums. Perhaps that will yield the source of the problem?

You might have to play around with the syntax a bit, but, in db.view, and using your example, I would try something like:

Code: Select all

select path from album where name like '%Complete British%'

That should list the paths of any album with the name containing the phrase "Complete British."

[phred]

I'm no expert on the ins and outs of Subsonic, but if you are doing a complete reinstall--not preserving the DB or anything--and the dupes are appearing after a rescan, I think Occam's razor kicks in and the issue is that you have duplicates somewhere. Perhaps they are in a hidden folder somewhere?

I've thought the exact same thing. But using MusicBee and using Squeezebox, no duplicates are displayed. And looking at the NAS where all the music files are stored also shows no duplicates.

Since you're digging around in the DB, anyway, you should check out the paths to the duplicate albums. Perhaps that will yield the source of the problem?

I've opened the DB in Notepad++ and searched for "Complete British" and I'm coming up with 411 hits. Yet there are only 60 tracks in total across the three albums. Even if you add in cover art (1 per album) and lyrics for almost all the tracks, there shouldn't be anywhere close to 150 occurrences pf "Complete British." So something is definitely funky in the DB. I'll have more time to look at this later in the week and report back.

Thanks.

[Jägs]

I'd specifically run the query I posted above, instead of searching for all of the tracks and entries in the DB, as it should return a much more manageable number of results, which should help narrow things down.

[phred]

I'd specifically run the query I posted above, instead of searching for all of the tracks and entries in the DB, as it should return a much more manageable number of results, which should help narrow things down.

Could you be a little more specific as how to run this query? From what you've already said, I know to go to db.view and do I then simply enter the path to the albums in question that have dupes? Wouldn't I need a command of some sort to get it going. I know you said I'd have to play with the syntax, but I don't even know where to begin with that.

Thanks.

[Jägs]

You should just be able to go to your db.view page, paste that SQL statement into the textarea field, and click the OK button. Subsonic will then return all of the albums that match that path.

You can also re-run the SQL statement, replacing "path" with "*" to get all of the details. At least this will tell you where Subsonic things the albums are, and you can look to see if there are any duplicate paths, hidden paths--mainly on *nix system, these start with a period--other strange paths, etc.

[phred]

Thanks Jags, but no success. I'm getting 'unexpected token' errors no matter what criteria I use in searching for the path. But I'm not going to spend any more time on this. The issue is only happening with three albums and I can easily overlook that.

[phred]

Well, I have finally gotten to the bottom of this issue of duplicates. Apparently Subsonic is scanning the trashbin directory on my NAS. Once I emptied the bin and rescanned, the dupes disappeared.

Now I'd like to find a way to specify certain directories not to scan. Is there already an option in 6.1 for this? If so, I can't find it.

Suggestions?