Conversion Induced UI Malfunction?

[Netfool 20]

Just after midnight last night I started a conversion of a large (19GB) file to convert it from H264 to HEVC.  By 5pm today it was 96% complete.

This evening, starting about 8pm we were watching a movie in our movies library through the HDMI output on the shield.  About 10pm the shield put up a warning that storage was critically low.  About 30 seconds later the video stalled.

I went to the computer and tried to log into the web interface.  The system returned "invalid password".   I went back to the TV and did a Shield restart.  It was then possible to finish the last few minutes of the movie.

Returning to the computer I was able to log into the web interface and I attempted to open the dashboard (gear icon, upper right corner) in an attempt to see the status of the conversion.  Instead of displaying the dashboard it displayed the user settings page.  The same page it displays when I click on the user icon to the left of the gear.   Clearing browser cache had no effect on the problem. 

I would submit a log, but there appears to be no way to do that without access to the dashboard.   So we're left with 3 questions:

1. How do I restore normal operation of the WebUI?
2. How do I determine the free storage on the Shield?
3. What size additional storage is reasonable to be able to convert a 20GB file and simultaneously play a file through the HDMI port?

In addition to the Shield's internal storage it has 128GB USB 3.1 flash. 

[Netfool 20]

I did an SMB connection to the shield, and I believe these are the relevant logs.   ...and probably an irrelevant log or two.

embyserver-63731570330.txt ffmpeg-remux-572759ef-0f1c-4b24-8c37-7ea467f7b5f7_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-b30f95ea-08bf-4d04-803a-90e278643b7e_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-32949180-a38e-4d1c-8259-811f2498ef5b_1.txt hardware_detection-63731570350.txt

[Carlo 4535]

It sounds like you ran out of storage space on the shield which causes bad things to happen.

You may want/need to delete the temp files from the conversion to free up space.

If you go to the transcoding menu option and scroll down the page you'll see an option Transcoding temporary path which is where the temp files are stored.

If you're having trouble getting into the UI you may have to delete a few normal apps from the box to free up some room to get things working again.

[Netfool 20]

Thanks!

Have a suggested answer to #3?  (What size additional storage is reasonable to be able to convert a 20GB file and simultaneously play a file through the HDMI port?)

Without a way to see how much storage is free, It's hard to decide how much more I need to add.  The only other apps on the Shield that get used are Sling, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime.

I'll try deleting those and doing a restart.

[Carlo 4535]

HDMI port has nothing to do with this. How much free space you need depends on how many streams, conversions, downloads are going on at any one time plus how big those files are.

I use a 1 TB SSD in my system for these types of things and for the different temp folders you can setup in Emby.  A 250 GB SSD (pretty cheap) drive would likely work just as well but I had the larger SSDs so that's what I used.

 

[Netfool 20]

NO JOY!

Deleting all of the apps that could be deleted including the Emby Client, leaving only Emby Server, then disabling the apps that could no be deleted and restarting the server did not solve the issue.

Clearing browser cache after that didn't help.  Nor did opening the browser with a clean profile (i.e. no history at all).   Switching to Chrome or Safari didn't help either.

What next?

[Netfool 20]

I think I have a 250GB SSD and a usb adapter here somewhere.  But first I need to figure out how resurrect the system.

Some guidance on needing this would be really helpful in the installation instructions!   ...and the Convert UI should do a little free storage checking and warn if it's likely to brick the system.

 

 

[Carlo 4535]

How much free storage space does the device say is free now?

 

[Netfool 20]

@cayars 121GB.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Netfool
Add ping

[Carlo 4535]

Internal storage?

[Netfool 20]

Sorry, that's on the USB stick.  12.8GB free in the internal storage.

 

[Netfool 20]

But I'm confused... I thought the purpose of adding the USB stick was to increase storage available to the system (not for the media store).

 

 

[Netfool 20]

Also.  What format should the SSD have so the Shield will recognize it.  I've formatted a Crucial 240GB SSD as FAT32 and again ExFAT but both times the shield only says it was safely ejected and won't let me select it.

[Happy2Play 9307]

12 minutes ago, Netfool said:

But I'm confused... I thought the purpose of adding the USB stick was to increase storage available to the system (not for the media store).

 

 

You have to set a custom "Transcoding temporary path" via Dashboard-Transcoding and the same for Conversions Dashboard-Conversions-Temporary file path if you need more space then the default locations provide.

[Netfool 20]

6 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

You have to set a custom "Transcoding temporary path" via Dashboard-Transcoding and the same for Conversions Dashboard-Conversions-Temporary file path if you need more space then the default locations provide.

Aha!          I didn't do that.   Thank you! 

Now the problem is how to fix the UI so I can get to the dashboard.

[Happy2Play 9307]

Not familiar with this platform but all I can suggest is looking in the users policy.xml at the <IsAdministrator> value since your screenshot basically shows user is not a admin.

Looking at the log it should be here /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.emby.embyserver/files/config/users/{USERID} folder

 

[Netfool 20]

@Happy2Play   Ok.  So making an SMB connection to the Shield the path is just Android/data/com.emby.embyserver/files/config/users/{USERID} folder.

The only obvious way to identify the various users is by the poster.png since the USERID is 32-digit hex number.  

The problem appears to be that the policy.xml file for my user (which I thought was the only admin user on the system) is zero bytes long.

There is, however one more user in the users directory than I remember defining.  In that one <IsAdministrator> is true.

I'm guessing the thing to do to try to recover is to copy that file to the folder with my USERID and see what happens.  Seems like if that fails, the only other thing to try is a complete server reinstall.  (And at this point probably preceded by an Android Shield reset which puts it back in a factory-fresh config). 

Please tell me I'm wrong about that!

[Happy2Play 9307]

11 minutes ago, Netfool said:

@Happy2Play   Ok.  So making an SMB connection to the Shield the path is just Android/data/com.emby.embyserver/files/config/users/{USERID} folder.

The only obvious way to identify the various users is by the poster.png since the USERID is 32-digit hex number.  

The problem appears to be that the policy.xml file for my user (which I thought was the only admin user on the system) is zero bytes long.

There is, however one more user in the users directory than I remember defining.  In that one <IsAdministrator> is true.

I'm guessing the thing to do to try to recover is to copy that file to the folder with my USERID and see what happens.  Seems like if that fails, the only other thing to try is a complete server reinstall.  (And at this point probably preceded by an Android Shield reset which puts it back in a factory-fresh config). 

Please tell me I'm wrong about that!

I would log in with the other user if possible and edit your other user via the dashboard.  If you can't do that then yes edit or copy the other user policy.xml and restart the server.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Happy2Play

[Netfool 20]

@Happy2Play

OK... media store is back online.  I must have bumped something when I moved the shield to my desk for debugging.  

We're pretty much there but I have a question about:

3 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

You have to set a custom "Transcoding temporary path" via Dashboard-Transcoding and the same for Conversions Dashboard-Conversions-Temporary file path if you need more space then the default locations provide.

The Shield identifies Device Storage as "Internal shared storage" (16GB) and "SanDisk USB Drive".   But in the Emby server how do I identify the path to the USB drive?   Is it /storage/emulated/0/?   And if it is, do I use that for both Transcode and Conversion paths or do I need to identify an as yet non-existant sub-directory for each?

...and what is the "Upload speed limit" and what's a reasonable value for it?

Edited July 29, 2020 by Netfool
Added follow-up question.

[Happy2Play 9307]

5 minutes ago, Netfool said:

@Happy2Play

OK... media store is back online.  I must have bumped something when I moved the shield to my desk for debugging.  

We're pretty much there but I have a question about:

The Shield identifies Device Storage as "Internal shared storage" (16GB) and "SanDisk USB Drive".   But in the Emby server how do I identify the path to the USB drive?   Is it /storage/emulated/0/?   And if it is, do I use that for both Transcode and Conversion paths or do I need to identify an as yet non-existant subdirectory for each?

Someone more familiar with the platform will have to help with the paths.

Emby will create a sub-directory for each custom path so you can point both to the same location.

[Netfool 20]

3 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Someone more familiar with the platform will have to help with the paths.

Emby will create a sub-directory for each custom path so you can point both to the same location.

@cayars  On a Shield Pro is the path to a USB drive in slot 1 (near the HDMI)  /storage/emulated/0/. ?

[Carlo 4535]

https://androidpcreview.com/nvidia-shield-tv-external-storage/

Try following that guide as I think it covers the different steps needed.

Once you've done that you should be able to use the GUI (I think) to select these locations.

If this doesn't work, let me know and I'll setup Emby Server back on my Shield TV, hook a drive up and figure it out for you.  I had removed it as I've got hardly any space left on my Shield.

[Carlo 4535]

Was just thinking if you don't have X-plore installed on your Shield install it.  It's a great file manager and you can use this to graphically view your storage and see the names.

You should be able to create a directory on the USB drive such as "temp-conversion" and then access it from Emby.

[Netfool 20]

Thanks @cayars X-plore sounds like a must have.   The android pc review article doesn't help much because the issue is how the SMB folder names map to the Emby file dialog names.  The Shield UI just identifies the two categories of flash as "internal storage" and "Sandisk USB drive" whereas the Emby file dialogs talk about /system,  /vendor,  /storage/emulated/0, /storage/<machine-name>/path (in the case of network storage), and then some /data/... directories.   I strongly suspect it's /storage/emulated/0 that I'm looking for.

Don't bother setting things up to test.  I'll do some trial and eror testing and figure it out. 

I'm working on a "Things I wish I new before I started installing Emby on the Shield Pro"  list.  I can send it along or post it to the forum if you think that would be useful.    I've worked on tech documentation in the past. I've always found the hardest part is that by the time I get something working I always know way too much about it and make unconscious assumptions about what absolute newcomers to the topic know.  On a given topic, you're only completely ignorant once, and that turns out to be really valuable if you're writing docs.

[Carlo 4535]

Heck ya, that document would be helpful and could be used for a knowledge base article or three in some form I'm sure!

I've got another Android device on the way (not Shield) that will be testing the server on so that will help a lot with questions like this.

I've given my older Shield TV Pros to family members (Roku 3 replacements) as I was planning on buying some new devices.  The only Shield TV I have is the 2015 version that isn't the Pro so less memory/storage which is why I don't have the software installed on it at the moment.