New Media Source Won't Scan

[KodiUser1138]

You don't.  You map network locations to drive letters.

This failed, as explained. It failed trying every method I could think of. Nothing worked to add a new source into my media library in v10.9.3 and v10.9.11. 

It isn't a "threat".  Jellyfin is changing.  Software changes, sometimes in significant ways that not everyone will like.

It was a passive agressive threat, unhelpful, and didn't present a path to resolution.

But this change is being made in the pursuit of improving the maintainability of Jellyfin's code.

I've never been against change to make things better. I ask questions and present ideas to try and find ways to make things better, like I've talked about using Collections which is not easy and is very hand tied. 

You aren't the only one.  And this is the reason, starting with 10.9, adding new network shares wasn't allowed in anticipation that in 10.10 using unmapped/unmounted network shares would go away entirely.

And this is not new.  We've long stated that network shares should be mounted to the OS.  Mapped to a drive letter in Windows and mounted to a directory in Linux.  We've stated this in our matrix/discord chat, on various forum posts, in Github tickets, and in our documentation (see below).

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/admini...ge#storage   (the storage section hasn't changed in two years)

Your link has no direction or guide as to how Jellyfin expects users to organize their media to make it easier for JF to understand. It is just a basci description as you've noted above and which I have stated multiple times completely failed.

You've also organized your files in a particular way.  While this organization doesn't make it impossible to have it work with Jellyfin, it does add a lot of tedious work.

We are telling you how Jellyfin works/behaves and how to best work with that behavior.  But you've been unwilling to reorganize (I don't blame you) or do the work to get Jellyfin to work with your current organization.  You keep going back to how you used to do things (you even reverted to 10.8.13).  But, like I said, software changes and not everyone will like it.  In this case, the change is needed for long term maintainability.

I, and I'm sure many people here, feel your pain.  When I first started using Jellyfin I spent a literal week fighting Jellyfin so I didn't have to rename and reorganize how I had my files pre-Jellyfin.  Then I gave up and spent a day getting my media to conform to what Jellyfin works best with.  It takes much much less time to make Jellyfin happy than to fight it.  And since you are interacting with Jellyfin (or Kodi), and not the files and folders, it makes sense to conform to Jellyfin's expectation.

I have still yet to see an explination of how Jellyfin expects media to be organized or what I am doing wrong. The only information I've learnt through this is JF not wanting to look for SMB shares any longer, despite the described process not working thus far for my setup.

I have 30+ hard drives, 200+ Terabytes, of media and don't currently have 1 storage unit with capacity to house all drives PLUS a build for a Jellyfin server. My setup is planned to change in the future, but that is not today. I'm certain I'm not the only user who has some sort of similar setup and is completely unware of these changes nor the understanding of what to do next.

I speak about "how things used to work" because things used to work, to engage the discussion and try to find reason what changes have been made and why so as to proceed further. I went backwards because all the direction on how to move forward failed. not because I refuse to conform. I took the direcction and worked to implement and it did not work. I tried moving even more forward and still came up with failure. Being tired of failure I went back in order to, at the very leat, find a situation where Jellyfin would work with ALL my media that I could sit at so I don't need to spend my days frustratedly flinging stuff at the wall to see what would stick.

I have put countless hundreds of hours into my media server work for over a decade now. I have learnt many hard lessons on how to get thing working within the confines of the systems the provide the enjoyment of my media I choose to use. Jellyfin came along and madea ton of my prior work much, much easier. But now there is an issue and to this point the suggested solutions have not worked. 

I cannot stay on v10.8 because clients won't work. I need to move forward. But I need to move forward and also have things work. Some changes to JF have made usability more difficult, not easier (collections) and now the change to JF finding media aren't working either. I am looking for a solution but also to have my media all in my server and to this point going backwards to add a new network location has been the only action that has worked. You can make of that what you will, I am just reporting my results.