Empty playlists

[KandyMan 7]

I upgraded DSM maybe a couple of months ago, followed the guide from DSM6 to DSM7, all went smoothly, upgraded again to DSM7.1, then 7.2, again all going smoothly. I’m always running the latest beta, just for context.

 

For a while now my wife and I have been selecting specific movies/episodes to watch, so I’ve no idea when this happened, but I know everything was fine back on DSM6, however yesterday when I opened one of our playlists, there were no items in the list. I checked all of our playlists. The name is there, the cover art is there, but all of the playlists have no items in them. I can see the playlists exist in the old Emby6 folder the migration guide says to backup, so I can only assume something has happened during the upgrade.

 

Is there anyway to restore the playlists without having to make them all again? I don’t even know where to look on the synology box to see if there’s data present in the files or not.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, did you follow this when upgrading?

 

[KandyMan 7]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, did you follow this when upgrading?

 

Yeah that was the guide I followed

[Happy2Play 9780]

6 hours ago, KandyMan said:

I can see the playlists exist in the old Emby6 folder the migration guide says to backup,

And what is the content of that folder?  I will guess either old backup was before Emby change to m3u format or path change in existing playlists.  As that is really the only way to have blank playlists.

[FrostByte 5392]

Since you still have the old playlists you could try copying them to the new location and then do scan.  Open it up first and make sure everything is still correct.

/volume1/@appdata/EmbyServer/data/playlists

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Yes you will need to verify xml or m3u along with there content, would have to do some looking on when this change happened but 4.8 added usershares so there was a change there with where new ones are stored also.

Edited August 26, 2024 by Happy2Play

[KandyMan 7]

I did my DSM upgrade on the 11th of June according to the latest log file in the backup folder which would have had the latest version of the Emby beta at the time as that was what was stated to do in the upgrade guide posted above.

I've just checked in the backup folder and I have a bunch of playlists in the playlist folder that have both xml and m3u files, a couple of them only have m3u files.  There's also the userplaylists folder that has a bunch of playlists in and they have only m3u files in them.

The media has not moved since the upgrade so I'm guessing a copy/paste should fix it?  Maybe?  I assume I'll have to SSH into the server to do that?

[Happy2Play 9780]

data/playlists assume the files actually have the correct content yes.

data/userplaylists no as you have to have the corresponding database as userplaylists as linked to usershares in the db and can not just be dropped into the folder as the correct db linking will not exist for the user.

So all userplaylists have to be recreated in Emby or dropped in data/playlists as global user playlists.

xml playlists are obsolete.

[KandyMan 7]

I actually want all of the playlists to be global so dropping them all into data/playlists is fine for me.  I should just be able to copy the backed up playlists into /volume1/@appdata/EmbyServer/data/playlists via SSH and call it good in theory?  Assuming nothing else is the problem

[KandyMan 7]

So I've emptied the existing playlist and userplaylist folders, copied everything from the backed up playlist and userplaylist folders into the current global playlist folder, restarted emby, ran the Scan Metadata Folder task, restarted emby again just to be sure, and all of the playlists have disappeared  they are showing in my SSH terminal as being there, but they're just gone in emby now

[Happy2Play 9780]

4 minutes ago, KandyMan said:

So I've emptied the existing playlist and userplaylist folders, copied everything from the backed up playlist and userplaylist folders into the current global playlist folder, restarted emby, ran the Scan Metadata Folder task, restarted emby again just to be sure, and all of the playlists have disappeared  they are showing in my SSH terminal as being there, but they're just gone in emby now

But have you verified the content of the m3u?  Does it correspond with the path shown in your Emby library for the items in the playlist?

[KandyMan 7]

2 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

But have you verified the content of the m3u?  Does it correspond with the path shown in your Emby library for the items in the playlist?

Yes they are correct

[KandyMan 7]

Oh actually, they are correct for the old location, I see what you're saying now.

For example, in DSM 6
../../../../video/Ripped Movies/Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)/Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).mkv
Is correct.

It may be that in DSM7 there needs to be an extra 1 or 2 ../ to get to the correct folder?

[Happy2Play 9780]

Not sure then as I have tested dropping playlists in data/playlists without issue unless there is a platform variable.

Not sure if the log will show anything but many need to see a server log for when you tried to readd these playlists.

or show the contents of the playlists.

Just now, KandyMan said:

Oh actually, they are correct for the old location, I see what you're saying now.

For example, in DSM 6
../../../../video/Ripped Movies/Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)/Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).mkv
Is correct.

It may be that in DSM7 there needs to be an extra 1 or 2 ../ to get to the correct folder?

Yes we will need to validate the paths within the playlist as I don't believe they are written that way anymore but could be wrong.

[Happy2Play 9780]

I guess an easy way to validate this would be create a playlist in Emby and compare the two.

[KandyMan 7]

This would explain why the playlists disappeared.  Is there a way I can give emby permission on the files?

2024-08-27 20:54:35.369 Error App: Error resolving path /var/packages/EmbyServer/var/data/playlists/MCU [playlist]
    *** Error Report ***
    Version: 4.9.0.30
    Command line: /volume1/@appstore/EmbyServer/system/EmbyServer.dll -programdata /var/packages/EmbyServer/var -ffdetect /var/packages/EmbyServer/target/bin/ffdetect -ffmpeg /var/packages/EmbyServer/target/bin/ffmpeg -ffprobe /var/packages/EmbyServer/target/bin/ffprobe -nolocalportconfig -ignore_vaapi_enabled_flag -pidfile /var/packages/EmbyServer/var/EmbyServer.pid -defaultdirectory /volume1/Public -updatepackage emby-server-synology72_{version}_x86_64.spk -noautorunwebapp
    Operating system: Linux version 4.4.302+ (root@build5) (gcc version 12.2.0 (GCC) ) #69057 SMP Fri Jan 12 17:02:28 CST 2024
    OS/Process: x64/x64
    Framework: .NET 8.0.6
    Runtime: volume1/@appstore/EmbyServer/system/System.Private.CoreLib.dll
    Processor count: 4
    Data path: /var/packages/EmbyServer/var
    Application path: /volume1/@appstore/EmbyServer/system
    System.UnauthorizedAccessException: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path '/var/packages/EmbyServer/var/data/playlists/MCU [playlist]' is denied.
     ---> System.IO.IOException: Permission denied
       --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
       at System.IO.Enumeration.FileSystemEnumerator`1.Init()
       at System.IO.DirectoryInfo.InternalEnumerateInfos(String path, String searchPattern, SearchTarget searchTarget, EnumerationOptions options)
       at Emby.Server.Implementations.IO.ManagedFileSystem.EnumerateFileSystemInfos(DirectoryInfo dir, Boolean recursive)
       at Emby.Server.Implementations.IO.ManagedFileSystem.GetFileSystemEntries(String path, Boolean recursive, FileSystemCredentials credentials)
       at Emby.Server.Implementations.Library.LibraryManager.ResolveFileList(List`1 fileList, IDirectoryService directoryService, Folder parent, LibraryOptions libraryOptions)
    Source: System.Private.CoreLib
    TargetSite: Void Init()
    InnerException: System.IO.IOException: Permission denied
    Source: 
    TargetSite: 

[Happy2Play 9780]

You would have to compare to either other files or even folder but yes as this is an issue copying anything into Emby folders as seen with plugins all the time.

[KandyMan 7]

Old m3u
../../../../video/Ripped Movies/Iron Man (2008)/Iron Man (2008).mkv
 Test m3u
../../../../../../../volume1/video/Ripped Movies/Iron Man (2008)/Iron Man (2008).mkv

So yeah, seems like emby didn't update the m3u files properly when migrating to DSM7, so even copying all of the files over from the backup won't help as I'll need to update all of the playlists and then figure out how to give emby permissions on them...

It's gonna be easier to just remake the playlists isn't it 

[KandyMan 7]

I've updated all of the playlists using find/replace in notepad++.  If there's a way to change ownership of the files to emby or at least give emby r/w permissions, that would be great, otherwise I think I'm just gonna have to take some time and remake all of the playlists, which would suck

[Happy2Play 9780]

22 minutes ago, KandyMan said:

It's gonna be easier to just remake the playlists isn't it 

To a point probably, from a user-controlled playlist yes.

@FrostByteany advice on permission here?

But will all come back to basic permissions.

But should be rather easy to find and replace to update path in m3u.

Find ../../../../video

replace ../../../../../../../volume1/video

[KandyMan 7]

Thanks I did the find and replace.  Just using a test playlist and checking ownership I get the following

-rw-r--r-- 1 emby emby 129 Aug 27 21:57 Test.m3u

When copying over the playlists I get this

---------- 1 root root 1860 Aug 27 22:02 'Star Wars.m3u'

I think this is the last step?  I'm reading through the basic permissions link you shared so hopefully I can get this figured out, though if anyone has the answer I won't say no 

Edited August 27, 2024 by KandyMan

[Happy2Play 9780]

Does this help?

 

[KandyMan 7]

-rwxrwx--- 1 emby emby 1860 Aug 27 22:02 'Star Wars.m3u'

Is what I have now, rescanned, restarted and it's still not showing in emby.  No errors in the logs either

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 minute ago, KandyMan said:

-rwxrwx--- 1 emby emby 1860 Aug 27 22:02 'Star Wars.m3u'

Is what I have now, rescanned, restarted and it's still not showing in emby.  No errors in the logs either

Where are you putting it?

[KandyMan 7]

 chmod -R 770 *
 chown -R emby *
 chown -R :emby *