SOLVED: Library Watcher not working

[Drakon]

Hi everyone,

soo, i admit the following is a bit convoluted, but i hope it makes sense.

So first i had my Jellyfin Instance running in Docker on my Synology NAS, and everything was working fine, but since the thing gets low on memory i decided to get a separate machine, with also better HW Acceleration capabilities and migrating the instance, however only config and cache folders are migrated. The media stuff, since it is so big, was supposed to stay on the Synology. Both machines are connected on the same switch via 1 GBit/s cables.

So i did the migration today. On the new server i am using Portainer and what i did was the following:

1. created "config" and "cache" volumes on the new server
2. created my "video" and "music" docker volumes on the new server, which are technically NFS Volumes, since Portainer allows you to do that. (Only read access however)
3. Stopped my old instance
4. copied the contents of the config and cache folders from the Synology over to the new server directly into the volume folders of docker
5. started the new instance

According to the log and tests, everything actually works. I can watch my library, i can listen to my music, hardware transcoding works etc. etc.

However i just noticed that the library watcher is seemingly not picking up on new files. This was working previously on the Synology, when the files were "directly there". In the log it is not mentioning any errors. I had the error with too little watchers available from the host, but fixed it on the Synology and prepared that on the new server right away.

Triggering the library scan manually, works though and the new files are being scanned and added properly and also work just fine afterwards.

Since the migration otherwise worked rather flawlessly, i don't want to play toooo much around with it (and break stuff by accident), but i wonder if one of the following could be the reason for this issue:

1. Using NFS to begin with
2. Using Docker Volumes instead of Bind mounts for the media (Portainer just conveniently allowed to create docker volumes which can connected via CIFS / NFS, so figured that might make things easier)
3. There is actually only read access (I couldn't find any info on what Jellyfin exactly needs for access rights on the media folders)
4. I messed something up in the migration process

So any kind of hints or help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: I forgot to mention the versions.

Prior to Migration 10.10.1
After Migration 10.10.3

[TheDreadPirate]

If you're talking about real time monitoring, that does not work over network shares. NFS and CIFS do not support it.

[Drakon]

Ah yes, that was what i meant. Okay, that is fair enough. Thank you though for clarification

[kandykarter]

I have my network shares mounted to a directory in fstab, and Jellyfin monitors them just fine.

[TheDreadPirate]

When you have real time monitoring enabled on a NFS share, it will continuously poll every file constantly. Depending on your library size and server/NAS performance, this can mean it won't cycle around to the new file for a while. Regardless, that is constant activity.

When the drives are local the file system uses inotify to alert Jellyfin of new files/changes. Much more efficient.

You can change the scheduled task for library scans to be more frequent, if you need. The default is once every 12 hours.

[Drakon]

When you have real time monitoring enabled on a NFS share, it will continuously poll every file constantly.  Depending on your library size and server/NAS performance, this can mean it won't cycle around to the new file for a while.  Regardless, that is constant activity.

Just to make sure now, since it reads as if the real time monitoring is enabled in the Jellyfin Options, it does constant polling on the shares? Since i just checked and doesn't appear to be the case, i see only NFS Activity, when i actually access a file.

Or am i misunderstanding something?

[TheDreadPirate]

One things I've noticed is that different systems behave differently regarding how they use realtime monitoring over NFS. On some systems it is constantly polling. On some systems, like yours, it just does nothing.

[kandykarter]

It seems like (on my system at least), it's up to which system actually makes the change to the filesystem. When I first got my N100 pc, I had Jellyfin running on it, but my automation apps & downloaders were still running on the Synology. In that configuration, Jellyfin would not monitor those shares for changes.

But then, as soon as I moved the downloaders/automation stuff to the same system as Jellyfin, it monitors the shares quite well.