Migration problems ubuntu to opensuse

[MickeyRat 13]

I'm a lifetime Emby Premiere subscriber and I'm trying to migrate from Xubuntu to Opensuse tumbleweed.  Everything appears to have worked except for 2 things.  The movie collections from Autoboxsets didn't make it and my live tv recording schedule didn't make it.

To head off what promises to be a bunch of questions, I need to explain my configuration.  All my libraries, cache, backups, metadata, recordings, etc. are on disks in a USB disk enclosure.  So, I can do the installation on another box and just move the enclosure to it, make sure the file protection is right, and restore the last Emby backup.  That should give me everything but, some things are still missing.  So, how do I get what's missing?

For now, I'm moving back. @cayars

Thanks

[Carlo 4561]

Sounds reasonable how you do that and if everything lines up perfectly then Emby Server shouldn't have much issue with this.

Besides just the Emby Server needing to be mounted the same way you are going to need a user and group setup on the new machine that exactly matches the old machine otherwise you'll likely have permission problems.

Before I give you a list of things to check post your Emby Server log or PM it to me if you like.  You should take a look through it looking for errors related to the two issues you mentioned. I would think you're going to find a directory is missing (renamed/mounted differently) or doesn't have the correct permissions for the emby user.

 

[Luke 42078]

@MickeyRat ?

[MickeyRat 13]

On 3/2/2023 at 9:50 AM, cayars said:

Sounds reasonable how you do that and if everything lines up perfectly then Emby Server shouldn't have much issue with this.

Besides just the Emby Server needing to be mounted the same way you are going to need a user and group setup on the new machine that exactly matches the old machine otherwise you'll likely have permission problems.

Before I give you a list of things to check post your Emby Server log or PM it to me if you like.  You should take a look through it looking for errors related to the two issues you mentioned. I would think you're going to find a directory is missing (renamed/mounted differently) or doesn't have the correct permissions for the emby user.

 

Thanks for the reply.  I've PMed you the log file.  I've never really looked at it.  There are some errors there that may need to be taken care of.  As far as permissions go,  I'll use a chown -R command at the top level to change ownership before I start the server.  That what I did when I tested.  

Sorry for the late reply.  I haven't done this yet so I'll be very interested in what you have to say.  

[Luke 42078]

Let us know what you guys find. Thanks.

[MickeyRat 13]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Let us know what you guys find. Thanks.

I will make sure that happens.  My bet is that it's something I did but, I can't tell what.  The only thing I saw in the long that I can correct is that there were several error messages like the following:

/mnt/DVR_disk/EmbyMetadata/metadata/people/Lorraine Bracco-tmdb-11478/folder.jpg

I went ahead and put those directories in but, I have a hard time believing that's the problem.

One thing I didn't mention is that when I originally set up the mount points for my libraries, I was using Plex and MythTV.  So the mount points were PMS_Lib and MythTV.  No good way to change that in Emby at the moment.  Yes, I've looked at that thread.  So what I did was use symbolic links to change the names.  Here's how my /mnt directory looks.

drwxrwxrwx  8 emby emby 4.0K Jan 23 07:35 DVR_disk
drwxr-xr-x 14 emby emby 4.0K Aug 21  2022 MS_disk
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   13 Dec 27 16:07 mythtv -> /mnt/DVR_disk
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   12 Dec 27 16:08 PMS_Lib -> /mnt/MS_disk

If I do the same thing on the destination server, I don't see why it would be a problem but, I need to provide as much info as is reasonable.

 

Edited March 5, 2023 by MickeyRat

[Carlo 4561]

Looks like you're missing a few xml files.

2023-03-05 00:10:09.878 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/fanart.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.878 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/chapters.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/notifications.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/autoorganize.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/channels.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/dlna.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Info Server Configuration Backup: Copied up /var/lib/emby/config/livetv.xml to /mnt/mythtv/EmbyBackups/Emby Backup - 2023-03-05 00.10.0 - Auto/livetv.xml
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/data/timers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/data/seriestimers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/subtitles.xml not found

The files may be there, but Emby Server doesn't have ownership or permissions to use the files.
Can you try and correct this?

[Happy2Play 9780]

13 minutes ago, cayars said:

Looks like you're missing a few xml files.

2023-03-05 00:10:09.878 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/fanart.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.878 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/chapters.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/notifications.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/autoorganize.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/channels.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/dlna.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Info Server Configuration Backup: Copied up /var/lib/emby/config/livetv.xml to /mnt/mythtv/EmbyBackups/Emby Backup - 2023-03-05 00.10.0 - Auto/livetv.xml
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/data/timers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/data/seriestimers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/subtitles.xml not found

The files may be there, but Emby Server doesn't have ownership or permissions to use the files.
Can you try and correct this?

Could be normal depending on one's setup/usage as mine show the same/similar thing.

2023-03-05 00:10:00.161 Warn Server Configuration Backup: Y:\Emby-Server\programdata\config\chapters.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:00.178 Warn Server Configuration Backup: Y:\Emby-Server\programdata\config\autoorganize.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:00.178 Warn Server Configuration Backup: Y:\Emby-Server\programdata\config\channels.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:00.190 Warn Server Configuration Backup: Y:\Emby-Server\programdata\data\timers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:00.191 Warn Server Configuration Backup: Y:\Emby-Server\programdata\data\seriestimers.json not found

 

[MickeyRat 13]

3 hours ago, cayars said:

Looks like you're missing a few xml files.

2023-03-05 00:10:09.878 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/fanart.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.878 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/chapters.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/notifications.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/autoorganize.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/channels.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.911 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/dlna.xml not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Info Server Configuration Backup: Copied up /var/lib/emby/config/livetv.xml to /mnt/mythtv/EmbyBackups/Emby Backup - 2023-03-05 00.10.0 - Auto/livetv.xml
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/data/timers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/data/seriestimers.json not found
2023-03-05 00:10:09.952 Warn Server Configuration Backup: /var/lib/emby/config/subtitles.xml not found

The files may be there, but Emby Server doesn't have ownership or permissions to use the files./var/lib/emby/data
Can you try and correct this?

I looked and none of those XML files exist.  I did find a timers.json and a seriestimers.json but, they are in /var/lib/emby/data/livetv not /var/lib/emby/data.  They look like they contain my recording schedule.  Now that I know they exist, I can think of a couple hacks to get those files to the new server but, I'm not in a hurry. I'd rather do this right.

[Carlo 4561]

12 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Could be normal depending on one's setup/usage as mine show the same/similar thing.

I wouldn't expect to see all of them but thought the TV related ones would be there.

[MickeyRat 13]

10 hours ago, cayars said:

I wouldn't expect to see all of them but thought the TV related ones would be there.

I can try doing the migration with a backup but, move those json files myself.  There's a good chance that will get my recording schedules.  I don't think it will do anything for the collections though.  Any other suggestions?

[Carlo 4561]

I would suggest doing a mass copy of everything under and including the EmbyServer directory from one machine directly to the other.
You can copy the files right overtop the current install if you set the overwrite parameter.

Then do you your ownership and permission changes.

I would then reinstall Emby Server right over top of this.  That will make sure all the Emby files get set to the correct permissions.

Why don't you try doing a copy of the Emby folder with all subdirectories.

Carlo

PS Are the Ubuntu & Opensuse virtual or physical machines?
Curious, why the switch to Opensuse?

[MickeyRat 13]

15 hours ago, cayars said:

I would suggest doing a mass copy of everything under and including the EmbyServer directory from one machine directly to the other.
You can copy the files right overtop the current install if you set the overwrite parameter.

Then do you your ownership and permission changes.

I would then reinstall Emby Server right over top of this.  That will make sure all the Emby files get set to the correct permissions.

Why don't you try doing a copy of the Emby folder with all subdirectories.

Carlo

PS Are the Ubuntu & Opensuse virtual or physical machines?
Curious, why the switch to Opensuse?

I'll answer the last questions first. 

These are physical machines. 

The reason for the switch is more personal than technical.  I use Arch on my daily driver and Ubuntu is a bit like Windows, it makes a lot of decisions I'd rather make myself.  Also it's not a rolling release.  Right now, I'm on Xubuntu 20.04 LTS and while that's still supported, it does pester you to upgrade to 22.04 LTS.  I tried an in-place upgrade and it failed.  So, eventually I'm going to have to go back to bare metal whether I stay with Ubuntu or not.  As long as I'm doing that, I might as well get to an OS that I like better.  I realize that this leaves a lot of questions unanswered but, this could be a long discussion.  I'm willing to have it but, it might be more appropriate in PMs.   I'll add that I don't see any reason to believe I wouldn't have the same problem if I was going to Xubuntu 22.04.

I use HD Homerun tuners.  So, I can't run both systems in parallel.  It's going to take me a while to get a window I can try this.  My wife likes her TV.  I'll post here when I try it.

 

[Carlo 4561]

Being physical machines there shouldn't be anything tricky going on like can happen with Docker, VMs or containers. Security settings should be rather straightforward.

You should be able to do what I mentioned copying over Emby directories in mass then installing the same version over it. You will not want Emby running when you do this so no files are open.  Of course, using rsync or similar you could do a copy while Emby is running then close it down and run again to get the files that change.

Using ZFS by any chance?

PS you can have two Emby servers both accessing HD Homerun tuners as long as a tuner is available this will work.

If you would like to take this to PM that's fine with me.

Carlo

 

[Q-Droid 989]

I would change the order and install the same version of emby first then shut it down and copy the files over. Chown them to emby:emby before starting the server again. Unless the user and group are created before the install the ownership is unknown on the destination and UID/GID are not guaranteed to be the same as the source. The default installation also starts the server automatically. 

[MickeyRat 13]

On 3/8/2023 at 12:41 PM, cayars said:

Being physical machines there shouldn't be anything tricky going on like can happen with Docker, VMs or containers. Security settings should be rather straightforward.

You should be able to do what I mentioned copying over Emby directories in mass then installing the same version over it. You will not want Emby running when you do this so no files are open.  Of course, using rsync or similar you could do a copy while Emby is running then close it down and run again to get the files that change.

Using ZFS by any chance?

PS you can have two Emby servers both accessing HD Homerun tuners as long as a tuner is available this will work.

If you would like to take this to PM that's fine with me.

Carlo

 

Not ZFS but, I am using LVM. 

I have no idea what will happen if 2 emby servers try to use the same HD Homerun at the same time.  I have 2 HD Homeruns with 2 tuners each.  I know in MythTV I had to define each tuner separately.  Perhaps Emby just says record this and lets the HD Homerun pick the tuner.  Either way, it's a situation I'd just as soon avoid.

I'll probably do the copy booted off a USB to be certain there are no conflicts. 

On 3/8/2023 at 1:58 PM, Q-Droid said:

I would change the order and install the same version of emby first then shut it down and copy the files over. Chown them to emby:emby before starting the server again. Unless the user and group are created before the install the ownership is unknown on the destination and UID/GID are not guaranteed to be the same as the source. The default installation also starts the server automatically. 

I'm not the most knowledgeable person on this thread but, this is more along the lines of what I was thinking.  If you copy the files and do the install, there's a good chance that install is going to overwrite some of your files.  Unless I do something fancy like create the user and group manually and specify the UID and GID, I will definitely have to do some chown commands.  I think that's safer.

All this leaves me with a couple questions.  Do I use the Emby backup at all?  If so, when do I use it?

[Q-Droid 989]

To be clear the paths you want to copy over for the migration are the EMBY_DATA path, normally /var/lib/emby, and custom paths you've configured for things like cache, metadata, transcoding temp, conversion temp, etc. You don't want to touch or copy the actual software installation.

If you were to copy first then install the only concern would be to make sure the EMBY_DATA and custom locations have the right ownership and permissions. Installing "on top" of existing files is treated like an update or reinstall. If it's the same version then nothing changes.

Your media storage will be the trickiest part and you have to make sure the library paths are the same on the new host. This is also a good reason to pre-create the emby user and group with the same UID/GID as the source host. The installer will use the existing accounts then data and library ownership will match the source. 

If done right you use the Emby backup after - to create new ones...

 

[MickeyRat 13]

1 hour ago, Q-Droid said:

To be clear the paths you want to copy over for the migration are the EMBY_DATA path, normally /var/lib/emby, and custom paths you've configured for things like cache, metadata, transcoding temp, conversion temp, etc. You don't want to touch or copy the actual software installation.

If you were to copy first then install the only concern would be to make sure the EMBY_DATA and custom locations have the right ownership and permissions. Installing "on top" of existing files is treated like an update or reinstall. If it's the same version then nothing changes.

Your media storage will be the trickiest part and you have to make sure the library paths are the same on the new host. This is also a good reason to pre-create the emby user and group with the same UID/GID as the source host. The installer will use the existing accounts then data and library ownership will match the source. 

If done right you use the Emby backup after - to create new ones...

 

Thanks, the library paths aren't a problem.  They are just mount points.  As I said earlier in this thread, all my media and a lot of my emby files like cache, etc. are on LVM volumes that are on disks in a USB enclosure.  Here are the steps I did previously:

1. Installed emby.
2. Stopped and disabled the Emby server.
3. Moved the USB enclosure to the new server, fixed fstab and rebooted.
4. Did a chown -R emby:emby on all the top level directories containing Emby files in the enclosure.
5. Started the Emby server and restored the backup.
6. Enabled the Emby server.

That seemed to work fine for most things.  The only issue is my recording schedules and collections didn't come across with the backup.  

It looks to me like the recording schedule is in those json files mentioned earlier in this thread.  That makes sense because it's clear the backup didn't find them.  I still don't know about the collections.  It's possible the Auto Box Sets plugin needed more time to run to get them but, they really should be part of the backup.

I can create the user and group ahead of the install with the correct UID and GID.   Provided the install doesn't replace them or freak out because they are there, it'll save me some chown commands.  

I'm not going to get a chance to do anything till Sunday.

[Carlo 4561]

Did you run a full library scan before noting the collections weren't present?
It should have run during a nightly process so the collections should be there at this point unless something else is off.

You mentioned doing a chown which would be half of the permissions.  Did you also reset user permissions as well?

I would create users or groups yourself but instead run the installer, then typically the copy, set permissions and ownership, then install again over top for good measure.
But you're not really doing a copy but a physical move of the data storage subsystem itself.   I can't recall every doing that with USB as I wouldn't run it that way.

Unrelated to your issue but I just wanted to mention this as it will affect your performance.

Personally, I'd not run Emby from USB (5Gbps) drives as it's limited in throughput and takes about a 30% hit in transfer rate compared to SATA3. Some USB drives have a way of disconnecting/reconnecting which can play havoc on databases.  I'd use an internal HDD, SDD or better yet NVMe or Optane disk. Optane is the Ultimate for this type of thing but NVMe drives are far more affordable and common. Any place I mention NVMe you could replace with Optane (M.2 or U.2) to get even faster results.

I'd install it on an NVMe if at all possible as this gives you much faster throughput and less latency for nearly everything you do. Consumer SATA drive range from 50 to 180 iOPs, SAS Enterprise drives can reach about 400 iOPs. A SATA SSD will top out around 95,000 iOPs which is a lot faster than spinning rust. Enter NVMe with PCI 3.0 hitting 500,000 iops and the SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB NVMe PCI 4.0 hitting 1,400,000 and you can how much improvement an NVME drive can make. An 5800X Optane drive running on the older PCI 3.0 will turn in over 2.5 million iOPs reaching 4 million given enough PCI lanes without the aid of PCI 4.0.  Optane is ridiculously fast for making single sector reads and writes of 4K with an average access time of 6 to 8 microseconds (not milliseconds) as well as having very long endurance that NVME can't compare to.

The NVMe won't be holding your media but will hold the base install of dlls and executables of Emby.  On the NVMe you would also have the metadata, cache, transcode directory and depending on size of NVMe, the recording directory. You could them move the recordings off NVMe to a different storage location by a system task.  

That gives you very fast initial access to all metadata and cache so everything from database to graphics load quickly.  Your iOPS will be much higher and so will your throughput.

Carlo

[MickeyRat 13]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

Did you run a full library scan before noting the collections weren't present?
It should have run during a nightly process so the collections should be there at this point unless something else is off.

You mentioned doing a chown which would be half of the permissions.  Did you also reset user permissions as well?

I would create users or groups yourself but instead run the installer, then typically the copy, set permissions and ownership, then install again over top for good measure.
But you're not really doing a copy but a physical move of the data storage subsystem itself.   I can't recall every doing that with USB as I wouldn't run it that way.

Unrelated to your issue but I just wanted to mention this as it will affect your performance.

Personally, I'd not run Emby from USB (5Gbps) drives as it's limited in throughput and takes about a 30% hit in transfer rate compared to SATA3. Some USB drives have a way of disconnecting/reconnecting which can play havoc on databases.  I'd use an internal HDD, SDD or better yet NVMe or Optane disk. Optane is the Ultimate for this type of thing but NVMe drives are far more affordable and common. Any place I mention NVMe you could replace with Optane (M.2 or U.2) to get even faster results.

I'd install it on an NVMe if at all possible as this gives you much faster throughput and less latency for nearly everything you do. Consumer SATA drive range from 50 to 180 iOPs, SAS Enterprise drives can reach about 400 iOPs. A SATA SSD will top out around 95,000 iOPs which is a lot faster than spinning rust. Enter NVMe with PCI 3.0 hitting 500,000 iops and the SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB NVMe PCI 4.0 hitting 1,400,000 and you can how much improvement an NVME drive can make. An 5800X Optane drive running on the older PCI 3.0 will turn in over 2.5 million iOPs reaching 4 million given enough PCI lanes without the aid of PCI 4.0.  Optane is ridiculously fast for making single sector reads and writes of 4K with an average access time of 6 to 8 microseconds (not milliseconds) as well as having very long endurance that NVME can't compare to.

The NVMe won't be holding your media but will hold the base install of dlls and executables of Emby.  On the NVMe you would also have the metadata, cache, transcode directory and depending on size of NVMe, the recording directory. You could them move the recordings off NVMe to a different storage location by a system task.  

That gives you very fast initial access to all metadata and cache so everything from database to graphics load quickly.  Your iOPS will be much higher and so will your throughput.

Carlo

First,  USB3 speeds are perfectly adequate for video files.  Of course you can get faster but, you don't need that speed for this application.  My libraries are on the USB along with the cache, transcode, backup and metadata directories. The database, application, and var files are on an internal sata SSD.  A decent USB enclosure will not have the disconnect problems you mentioned.  I've had this setup for several years and even with MythTV, which is WAY more persnickety than Emby, I've never had an issue related to that and I don't see any reason to think that the issues I'm seeing are related to this setup.  Just to be clear, this enclosure holds five drives and has it's own power supply with a built in fan etc.  It's not one of those single disk enclosures powered off the USB.

I did not do a library scan but, I will tomorrow.  That will get almost all that I would like to see if it rebuilds the collections.  However, it's not actually complete because in a very few cases, I have manually added movies to collections.  Perhaps the movies I added manually will show up once the collections are there.  If they don't, it's a minor irritant not a fatal flaw.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say chown only covers half the permissions.  The only users that need modify access to these files are root and Emby and the chown command makes Emby own the files.  All the files have world read.  So, I don't understand what user permissions you are referring to.

What I intend to do first tomorrow is to do everything I did before but, put in those missing json files with the correct ownership and do a library scan.  That will probably do it.  If it doesn't, I'll try more extensive copying.  I'll have all day.

[Q-Droid 989]

Pros and cons aside the reason for making the destination exactly like the source system during the migration is so that you don't have to rely on backup/restore and scans when you're done. Copying (sync) the Emby data and preserving the library and custom paths should accomplish that. I do agree with @cayars that the best perf can be achieved with certain things on the fastest storage though with one caveat - the fastest you have ON HAND. In other words if you're satisfied with your current system there's no need to go all out. Adding my 2 cents, access to cache and metadata can be sensitive to latency and noticeable when rendering the UI. The media itself is a trickle in the grand scheme of things.

[Carlo 4561]

14 hours ago, MickeyRat said:

First,  USB3 speeds are perfectly adequate for video files.  Of course, you can get faster but, you don't need that speed for this application.  My libraries are on the USB along with the cache, transcode, backup and metadata directories. The database, application, and var files are on an internal sata SSD.  A decent USB enclosure will not have the disconnect problems you mentioned.  I've had this setup for several years and even with MythTV, which is WAY more persnickety than Emby, I've never had an issue related to that and I don't see any reason to think that the issues I'm seeing are related to this setup.  Just to be clear, this enclosure holds five drives and has it's own power supply with a built in fan etc.  It's not one of those single disk enclosures powered off the USB.

I used to use multiple 8 bay USB3/eSATA JBOD boxes and never had disconnect issues on the dell servers.  But if I were doing something and plugged it into an HP or Lenovo desktop I would get disconnect issues. It's probably caused by the particular USB chipset or drivers on the other computers. But if the disconnects don't happen on the computer running Emby then it's not an issue. External media going through USB3 (5 Mb) will have higher latency just because of the overhead of SATA to USB (vice versa) . Throughput will be a lower as well but still way higher then needed for retrieving media so not a problem on that front.

It's the latency that can kill performance when lots of things are taking place at one time especially on HDDs as the read/write heads are constantly moving and access times get high which causes the working queue to build up to the point of the OS writing multiple blocks at the same time to relieve the queue. Typically, that 5ms or so which starts to make a difference even for things like displaying cover graphics. Using an SSD or NVMe for cache, metadata, transcoding and recording (depending on size of SSD/NVMe) makes a world of difference.  You can check the size of your current cache & metadata then add 25 to 50GB per average stream needing transcoding and pickup an SSD of that size.  256GB SSD/NVMe can be had off Amazon for $20 to $25 so if you have internal space for something like this the cost of the upgrade for most people should be in reach and will make a world of difference.

You mentioned you have an SSD already so take a look and see how much free space you have. If you have enough free space to copy your cache directory there by all means do that, then metadata as well and if you still have some free space consider moving the transcode directory there as well.

The other part of permissions I was referring to besides chown is chmod. The first is used to set Emby as the owner and group owner and chmod is used to set permissions for read, write & execute for the 3 sets of permissions being the owner of the file, another set for the members of the file’s group, and a final set for everyone else.

 

[MickeyRat 13]

I tried a few other things but, here's what worked.  

1. Get all the disks mounted in properly from fstab.
2. Create an emby user and group with UID and GID that match what's on the source server.
3. Copy everything in /var/lib/emby from the source to the destination server.
4. Install emby.

When I fired it up, everything was there.  I didn't need to restore the backup at all.  I got a warning from the server when I created a user with a UID under 1000.  There's probably a standard that I don't know about somewhere that says that range is reserved for applications.  The install gave a warning about the /var/lib/emby directory being present but, it looks like it did what I needed.

I hit a snag when I tried to connect remotely.  After trying a variety of network settings.  I did do a backup restore.  That didn't fix it either.  Then I found the firewall that SUSE put in and disabled it.  That fixed the problem.  My router is my firewall.  I'm not worried about my LAN.  Because I did actually do a backup restore, I can't positively say the backup wasn't needed but, I don't think it was.

chmod isn't an issue.  Remember these files didn't get copied.  Their protection mask never changed.

Before I put in my $0.2 about other comments.  I need to say I retired in 2019 after working about 40 years as a computer professional. The last 20 was as an Oracle DBA.  You can always make something faster. All it takes is time and money.    It's not just the disks.  This is running on an old I5 micro desktop with 16GB RAM I picked up on EBAY for $80.  I'm satisfied with the performance I'm getting.  If it gets to be a problem, I'll do something about it.  I'll agree there's plenty of room for improvement.

I prefer to keep as much application stuff off my system disk as is reasonable.  I'm not going to fill up /var with a bunch of symlinks to move things other places but, if the application gives me a reasonable way to do it, I will. Emby gave me a reasonable way to do it for some things.

Lastly thanks to all for your help.

[Luke 42078]

Thanks for following up !