(2024-11-23, 12:53 AM)TheDreadPirate Wrote: In my experience, Jellyfin preserves metadata and watch status when I've had to move files around.
In Jellyfin add your new folder to the library BEFORE you move your data. Once you've added the new folder you will STOP jellyfin completely. While Jellyfin is stopped you will move your files to the new folder. Before proceeding, you should backup your Jellyfin data directory so that you can restore if something goes wrong. You never know. Once the files transfer is complete you can then start Jellyfin. Scan your library and it should just remap all your existing metadata and watch status to the relocated folders. Once you've verified that you can remove the old folder from the library settings.
Many thanks for this hint!
Sadly, it did not work out - see the next post with all details.
# Jellyfin: Moving Libraries on macOS
I show what I did and how and then the result of this.
## Preparations
tja@mini:~/Library/Application Support$ du -hs jellyfin/*
1.1G jellyfin/cache
28K jellyfin/config
24M jellyfin/data
924K jellyfin/log
201M jellyfin/metadata
16K jellyfin/plugins
44K jellyfin/root
I first stopped Jellyfin, then I created a backup of the above data:
tja@mini:~/Library/Application Support$ tar cf ~/Library_Application_Support_jellyfin.tar ./jellyfin
tja@mini:~$ ls -h Library_Application_Support_jellyfin.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 tja staff 1.3G Nov 23 14:25 Library_Application_Support_jellyfin.tar
I prepared new folder for the new Library locations:
tja@mini
Volumes/XTRMQ$ mkdir -p MEDIA/{MOVIES,SERIES,PRIVATE,INTERNET,INBOX}tja@mini
Volumes/XTRMQ$ find MEDIA -ls5322 0 drwxr-xr-x 7 tja staff 224 Nov 23 14:27 MEDIA
5324 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 tja staff 64 Nov 23 14:27 MEDIA/SERIES
5327 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 tja staff 64 Nov 23 14:27 MEDIA/INBOX
5326 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 tja staff 64 Nov 23 14:27 MEDIA/INTERNET
5325 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 tja staff 64 Nov 23 14:27 MEDIA/PRIVATE
5323 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 tja staff 64 Nov 23 14:27 MEDIA/MOVIES
After that, I started Jellyfin again and added those empty locations as new Libraries to Jellyfin:
Jellyfin webpage, Dashboard, Libraries, Libraries, Add Media Library
I added the new folders and only enabled “Save artwork into media folders” and the 3 Trickplay options for all of them.
For some unknown reason, the Library names all appeared with an appended “2”: MOVIES2
I also face the first problem here: You cannot see which type a Library is, when it is shown as “Other”. I tried “Mixed Films and Programmes” and that was the wrong guess. I needed to use “Home Videos and Photos” for this Library instead.
## Moving content
I then shutdown Jellyfin again, made new backup of the Jellyfin configuration, just to be sure:
tja@mini:~/Library/Application Support$ tar cf ~/Library_Application_Support_jellyfin_2.tar ./jellyfin
And then I moved my content:
I made sure that the OLD folders did exist, but were empty and that the NEW folders contained the content instead.
## Restarting Jellyfin
Then I started Jellyfin again, opened it’s webpage, entered the Dashboard and issued “Scan All Libraries” ... which did not do nothing at first, at least not visible. But with a later try, the progress bar appeared.
After that I checked my new MOVIES2 Library - and found all of my metadata deleted!
All movies have wrong names, changed or wrong images, other have no linking to a movie database anymore or point to an chinese version of the movie (one of the Star Wars movies)
It’s like I started new!
Horrible.
To make this short: Jellyfin is the worst software I EVER encountered!
It makes any migration nearly impossible, which is unheard of.
I still think about trying those sqlite commands or if I just should open the old and new Libraries in 2 browser windows and redo everthing I did before, identifying and renaming stuff.