Solved whole library disappearing multiple times!
#1
Hi guys,

After Nickr helped me very well with my Raspi/Laptop playback, I got one last problem with my network!

The movie and TV series library library of XBMC is build up from 4 maps. There are a 'Movies laptop' and 'TV series Laptop' folders on my laptop in which my downloads end up, and there is a 'Movies' and 'TV series' map on my AC Ryan 1TB which serves as a HDD because my laptop only has 100 GB extra storage!

The library is build op nicely and everything works great but....in the last 2 weeks it happened 4 times now that the whole library was gone! This happened after:

- I changed the AC Ryan USB from the Raspi to my laptop to copy over 100 GB from my laptop to my AC Ryan, cuz the laptop was full. I tried to copy over the network, but for some reason that takes a gazillion years!!

Or

- My laptop is turned off for some reason being it froze and needed to be restarted or my wife thoufht it was in the way and cleaned it up! =))

Or

- The AC Ryan is turned after it froze. This sometimes happens when it running for a long time!

Si I had it happen in all 3 cases that my whole library was gone! When this happens and I go to 'Browse files' under 'Videos' in the XBMC main menu, The 4 aforementioned folders are still showing but the XBMC system hasn't saved/remembered what the content of those 4 folders is. Every time I have to manually re-enter if the maps content is 'movies' or 'TV series' and after I do that the library is rebuild again! This is pretty annoying, cuz 1) it takes XBMC a while to gather all metadata and build the library 2) everytime this happens the 'marked watched/unwatched' info is gone and I manually have to alter it again for all watched movies and series...

So after this long intro, my questions are:

- I do understand that XBMC needs access to the 4 folders to build the library, but why is the library immediately gone when the Laptop or HDD is turned of? Cant it remember/save the library and just say there is temporarely no access when one of the two is turned off? I cant be expected to have the laptop and HDD online......forever, or I lose everything??
- Why doesn't XBMC save which content I have attributed to the 4 folders the library is build from? It seems to forget everytime the laptop or hDD is turned off or disconnected!

Any help is greatly appreciated because this problem is getting pretty annoying! Thanks in advance!
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#2
XBMC doesn't forget. But if XBMC cleans the library and those sources aren't available while it's cleaning, it WILL remove anything in those folders from the library.

It sounds like you have XBMC set to Clean Library every time it starts. If you do, and any of your source drives are offline, that will result in the media getting removed from the library for you.

Go look in SETTINGS under the Video options for the Clean Library option and see what you have set.

I think there is also somewhere in the add-ons that you can control how often it auto cleans the library, in the same add-on that controls automatic library updates.
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#3
Thanks man! I indeed had turned on the option to update the library on startup of XBMC! So I turned that off now and hopefully its that simple! I couldnt find a way to set the number of auto updates or an option to set the times to update tho! Maybe have to do it manually from now on to ensure I have both the laptop and the HDD on! Thanks very much!
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#4
It's not the updating that will cause your problem. It's the CLEANING of the library, which is associated with updating that causes the problem.

If you update the library, it just looks for new stuff. If the sources are offline it just fails to update and your library remains unaffected.

But when you CLEAN the library, it compares what is in the library with what it can physically find on the disks. Anything that it can no longer find on disk is REMOVED from the library.

You don't have to disable the updating, you need that otherwise you can never add anything new to your library.

But you you need to be careful with CLEANING the library.
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#5
Okay I see, that makes perfect sense, but then I would expect multiple options to choose from regarding updating and cleaning! I can only find the option 'update upon startup' under setting and that is all! There should probably be options that let me UPDATE the library regularly but only CLEANS it when I want to! Cuz the only time I would have to really clean is when I copied movies from my laptop to my HDD cuz I would suspect I get a double entry then without cleaning since XBMC finds/found the movie in both maps!
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#6
You can update anytime you want. Just go to your video paths and choose update library/scan for new content from the context menu.
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#7
<cleanonupdate> is set in the advancedsettings.xml file in the userdata (wiki) directory. If you don't have this set to "true" in your advancedsettings.xml or you don't even have an advancedsettings.xml file, then the default should be "false" (i.e., your library will not be automatically cleaned when you update your library).
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#8
I believe I found the culprit! When I first setup the system and I was fooling around with the addons, I installed an addon named Watchdog and I totally forgot about it!! I thought about this today and indeed this addon had an autoclean option checked on in the settings! I changed this now and hopefully the problems are now solved!! Thanks guys for your input!!
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#9
Yes, watchdog will do that.
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