Disaster Recovery - Re-Add Podcasts?

[tsull360]

Hello,
I had a bit of a failure, and needed to reinstall subsonic. All has gone well with the exception of podcasts.

I've re-added the subscription, but some of the download are no longer in their feed, so subsonic won't download them. I still have the files themselves locally though.

Is there a way I can manually insert the needed records into the database? Or is there a more traditional/supported way to do this? My goal is to have the podcasts I have locally appear properly in the subsonic interface.

Thanks,
Tim

[InShaneee]

I asked about this myself not too long ago, and the answer appears to be that there is no simple way. It looks like if you know anything about HSQL database editing, you might be able to edit the database manually to add them back in, but that's beyond what I know how to do.

[colli419]

Hi Guys:

I am bumping this because I would also like Subsonic to be able to re-index the files you already have on your machine. I don't know if this is possible, but it would be great especially in the context you described.

Best,
MTC

[ZonOfthor]

Bump here too, was about to post exactly that question..

[getzjd]

For a good DR strategy, you could also virtualize your server and take backups with something like Veeam which captures the full image. You should then be able to restore this image to any vm host.

[sir2u]

I'm running on linux, so this is from that perspective.

Backing up the /var/subsonic/ directory and dropping that back on top of a fresh subsonic install restores the previous settings (playlists, podcasts, etc). In my experience, the only things that aren't carried over by this approach are settings specific to the web server setup (port), any modifications to the XML subsonic application configuration files (memory enhancements, cache settings, etc), and the actual music files (unless you happen to store those in that directory as well). I store the actual podcasts files in /var/subsonic/podcasts/ so when I had to do a restore the settings AND data were preserved. The music files and playlists settings will restore fine provided that the file paths are identical. I store my music in a network share, so I had to remount the shares with the same mount points and everything came up fine.

This approach gives the subsonic backup a small footprint and the restoration is a fairly simple process. It's almost a snapshot type of backup/restore for the subsonic configuration. The only thing I'd add is to document the modifications to the subsonic app config files. I had to re-enter those manually, and it helped to be able to just cut and paste.

I don't know if this helps with the immediate issue, but it might help if anything pops up in the future.

[tsull360]

I'm sure its wildly unsupported, but I've finally gotten around to inserting podcast files into the database. This enables me to reference existing files in the podcast section (I have some files for podcasts which no longer exist).

The first step involves creating the podcast channel:
insert into podcast_channel (ID,URL,TITLE,DESCRIPTION,STATUS) Values (6,'http://www.foo.com','Test Insert','Testing Manual Insertion','COMPLETED')

The second step involves inserting the actual podcast episodes. To do this you first need to retrieve the channel ID assigned from the step above:
select podcast_channel where TITLE='Title From Above'

Then use the value returned in the command below.
insert into podcast_episode (ID,CHANNEL_ID,URL,PATH,TITLE,DESCRIPTION,PUBLISH_DATE,DURATION,BYTES_TOTAL,BYTES_DOWNLOADED,STATUS,ERROR_MESSAGE) Values (371,6,'http://www.foo.com/stuff.mp3','c:\foo\stuff.mp3','Test Title','Description','2014-01-27 06:00:00.0','1:00:00','200','200','COMPLETED','')

Not user friendly (and not meant to be), but is doing what I need.