Downgrade from beta to stable branch

[Sarge88 9]

I read somewhere that I have to wait till the stable branch upgrades/merges with the beta  branch in order to switch from emby beta to emby stable. Is there a timeline on when that might be?

I'd like to remove myself from the beta branch and just get back on the stable branch without having to lose all of my database stuff. Waiting for the databases to merge is the only option I saw Todo that unless there's another way I haven't found yet.

Edited August 12, 2024 by Sarge88

[pwhodges 2012]

No, there's no other way around the fact that the database structure has changed.

Paul

[Sarge88 9]

Didn't think so. Do we have an idea when the stable branch will merge with the beta? So I can keep an eye out.

[pwhodges 2012]

I think Luke is hoping for late summer.  But as always, "it's ready when it's ready"...

Paul

[Sarge88 9]

Ok that's as good as any estimate.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

6 hours ago, Sarge88 said:

Didn't think so. Do we have an idea when the stable branch will merge with the beta? So I can keep an eye out.

The last time it took well over a year. I had an unexpected full crash of my main release server and I did not want to run the beta as my only server so I removed the beta completely and restarted Emby with the release version. That way I had a fresh install of the release to work with.
I will say that the fact that I store all metadata with the media, and i did not delete that, made recreating my environment easier than a fresh install but Emby still had to rebuild everything but most of my customizations, like collections etc., were retained. I made it a bit harder than it needed to be as my impatience kicked in and I did some manual things that turned out to be unnecessary and even detrimental to my new server's installation. 

If you do decide to downgrade be sure to give Emby plenty of time to get things back to normal. It took my server 2.5 days to get everything fully stable. I have something over 4400 movies and about 42000 TV episodes. Not to mention the thousands of photos and home videos. 

I do think I have a fairly large server database but there ae people here with MUCH larger systems. 

BTW: Try to avoid reboots during the install process as a computer reboot during some of the tasks slows things down a lot.

BTW2: I have now added a new server, running the beta, into my system so I am now running two servers, one release and one beta, and I seem totally stable, at least as far as servers go, 

Warning, if you do run two servers looking at the same media only allow one of them to "Store metadata with the media" or you will run into many problems and, eventually, have really serious problems that may require another full reinstall. I have my release server writing to my media libraries and the beta keeps most everything local.

[Sarge88 9]

10 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

The last time it took well over a year. I had an unexpected full crash of my main release server and I did not want to run the beta as my only server so I removed the beta completely and restarted Emby with the release version. That way I had a fresh install of the release to work with.
I will say that the fact that I store all metadata with the media, and i did not delete that, made recreating my environment easier than a fresh install but Emby still had to rebuild everything but most of my customizations, like collections etc., were retained. I made it a bit harder than it needed to be as my impatience kicked in and I did some manual things that turned out to be unnecessary and even detrimental to my new server's installation. 

If you do decide to downgrade be sure to give Emby plenty of time to get things back to normal. It took my server 2.5 days to get everything fully stable. I have something over 4400 movies and about 42000 TV episodes. Not to mention the thousands of photos and home videos. 

I do think I have a fairly large server database but there ae people here with MUCH larger systems. 

BTW: Try to avoid reboots during the install process as a computer reboot during some of the tasks slows things down a lot.

BTW2: I have now added a new server, running the beta, into my system so I am now running two servers, one release and one beta, and I seem totally stable, at least as far as servers go, 

Warning, if you do run two servers looking at the same media only allow one of them to "Store metadata with the media" or you will run into many problems and, eventually, have really serious problems that may require another full reinstall. I have my release server writing to my media libraries and the beta keeps most everything local.

I hope it doesn't take that long. And I have all my metadata saved with my media as well. But I'd rather not lose all of my users watched statuses and such. Unfortunately the beta and stable branch have incompatible databases.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

8 hours ago, Sarge88 said:

I hope it doesn't take that long. And I have all my metadata saved with my media as well. But I'd rather not lose all of my users watched statuses and such. Unfortunately the beta and stable branch have incompatible databases.

If you use the Emby backup or backup legacy and you can preserve watched status' etc. without problem. I use the legacy backup to transfer watched status from my release server to my beta server.  It is practically painless.

It turns out that having the metadata stored alongside the media does not really help the time it takes to rebuild everything.

Since Emby only works on one library at a time if you only create one new library at a time you can have the use of that library as soon as it is finished and then start the next one. 
Also be aware that the order of library scans is set by the order of creation. So you might want the libraries that scan the fastest to be the first created.