corrupted flac files

[dgreenhbs99]

I've been using Subsonic for a few months now, and just noticed that many dozens of my albums' flac files have been renamed and corrupted, are recognized by my OS now as binaries, and are not readable by any applications that can read flac files. Interestingly, they are still readable by Subsonic server...but they are no longer useable in any ordinary sense.

While the problem is concentrated in those files I've streamed to my Android player, it's not isolated to those albums. It appears the earliest files I allowed Subsonic to access are more likely to be corrupt.

We have suspended use of Subsonic, over any devices, until we understand what's going on. I now have to rerip a few dozen CDs....it is very discouraging.

Does anyone know what might be happening?

Thank you for your help.

[toolman]

Subsonic does not mess with your files.
It doesn't edit them or alter them in any way of form.
The transcoding proces is a read only proces so that doesn't change your files.
Only when you tag the files by the build-in tagging feature Subsonic will (re)write the tags.
I have a collection of 148,140 songs in formats, Flac, Mp3, WMA and Ogg and have been using Subsonic now for over 5 years and never experienced corruption of my mediafiles.
( Corruption of the database is another story.)
Subsonic can't rename songs. It just isn't capable of doing that. There's no "file managing" feature available in Subsonic.
So I don't know what's going on on your system, but I don't believe that Subsonic corrupts your files.

[dgreenhbs99]

toolman, thank you for the expression of disbelief. Nevertheless, many files are corrupt; they are readable by Subsonic but not useable in any other way. They are now MIME-type binaries with gobbedlygook names like O2XRWX~U without a file suffix. They are listed as type binaries/octet-stream -- which to me, means that they are files that were midstream somewhere between server and client, under the care of Subsonic, if you will, when some freak event happened. I cannot generate MIME-type files; I assume Subsonic does. I also assume the fact that Subsonic can still read them is a bit of a black swan event.

As they are MIME-type, I cannot append "flac" or "mp3" or anything to get them to play; I can only play them via Subsonic. It is not entire directories; only certain tracks. For example, whatever corruption happened often affected only certain tracks, leaving others intact and readable. In a couple of instances, entire directories were corrupted, and although Subsonic could still play the music therein, I could not enter the folder from the terminal or gui, even in superuser mode, because the "directory" was not longer recognized as a directory by Ubuntu.

I am using, and have always used, default flac transcoding.

The files are mostly (although not entirely) those I have accessed from my Android client. A few are older files (8 months old-ish) that I never attempted to access from Android, but likely were accessed from other clients in our household.

I have had to restart Subsonic now and then, so the log file is not dispositive...frankly, the log doesn't go back far enough for me to see what might have happened.

To refine the question: When something fails, Subsonic appears to be abandoning the flac files as MIME-type binaries. If I could learn what is causing this, I could try to take steps to avoid these circumstances in the future.

Thank you for any insight anyone may have on this.

[mrfloppy]

Can you tell us more about your enviroment?
Are the flac files on the same server as subsonic or mounted from a nas? Mount options? File permissions?
Do you use a reverse proxy?
Can you still play the files on your mobile device after you cleared the cache?

I have to admit that i also think subsonic is not part of your problem.

[dgreenhbs99]

Thanks for the questions. I'm running the server on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The hardware is a System76 Meerkat. The Subsonic server is version 6, build a7857c.

There isn't enough space for what I plan on either the Meerkat's disk drive or SSD, so I store my music library on an external NTFS-formatted Western Digital 4TB USB drive (NOT NAS) -- hereafter I'll just call it my "music drive", plugged directly into the Meerkat. I redefined the native "Music" folder in Ubuntu to point to my music drive. ls -al shows user, group, and other all have rwx privileges on all directories and files on the drive -- before I access the server again, I plan to trim that back, but I'm trying to understand if Ubuntu considers the server to be "user", "group", or "other"; I'm relatively new to Linux and very new to Subsonic. Stat shows all the file permission types as 777, as you'd expect. I am not sure what you mean by "mount options" -- the filesystem? The Meerkat is Ext4, and mounts the external drive's NTFS in the usual way, when the system boots. I'll be frank that I am not aware if I have any options for how Ubuntu mounts the filesystems for external drives. That's a little too nuts and bolts for me.

Locally, the Meerkat doesn't have a static IP, but the router rarely changes IP addresses...since installing Subsonic server on the Meerkat, the Meerkat has had the same local IP address and I do port forwarding on the router. I have a static public IP address, which I assume [myserver].subsonic.org points to when I request the server from my Android client; my router handles the rest. Inside my network, [myserver].subsonic.org just points to my Meerkat's address and port, I believe.

Does that help?

[dgreenhbs99]

oh, and I should add that I have a mixture of flac and mp3 files. The pop I typically rip to mp3, but I always rip classical, opera, etc. to flac to avoid information loss. So far, I've yet to find an instance of corrupted mp3 files...only flac files are affected.

[mrfloppy]

The mount options are in /etc/fstab
You should check your character set especially when you mount a nfts partition.

1. Mount the disk/partition read only with the correct character set.
2. Clear your Smartphone cache.
3. Use Subsonic and see if more files renamed or corrupted.

You don't need rwx (777), read permissions for your subsonic user is enough.

[dgreenhbs99]

ok, thanks. mount options are not in etc/fstab for external USB drives. I can find that information via the disk utility (though I don't know to which file it points, sorry), which tells me the automatic mount options are on. I am not sure what that implies for suid/nosuid or other options. Do you know? I do know that the drive is not mounted read-only. After I repair my files, I assume I should take it off automatic and add "ro" to my mount options?

I have it on user rwx because I am adding to my library daily. I hear you telling me that something (subsonic, ffmpeg, or something like it) can change my files if I don't have the ro mount option?

also, I don't know how to specify a character-set, and don't understand why that might matter....can you please explain? how would I specify a different character set than is currently being used?

Thank you.