Emby Server as a service - changing user messed up the database?

[Shade1982 2]

Hey all,

I installed Emby Server as a service using NSSM. This was all working fine, but the initial account I used was an admin account.

So, I changed it to a 'normal' user account to make it a bit more secure (and moved the AppData folders to other users' folder), but for some reason many items are not loading.

The user account has access to the library folders. I've also done 'Scan Library Files' and 'Refresh Metadata' tasks several times.

It also looks like the missing items are very slowly populating (I noticed a few more than I did yesterday).

Did I mess up the database? Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Luke 42078]

Quote

It also looks like the missing items are very slowly populating (I noticed a few more than I did yesterday).

Hi, has everything populated?

[Shade1982 2]

13 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, has everything populated?

More have been populated now, but many still haven't. It seems like things are happening, just extremely slow.

I checked the server itself, there don't seem to be any immediate performance bottlenecks on the OS level. Could it be I messed up something that could impact database performance? Should I do a clean install with configuration export\import?

Edited June 25, 2025 by Shade1982

[Shade1982 2]

On 6/25/2025 at 5:25 AM, Luke said:

Hi, has everything populated?

It has now fully populated. Which means it took close to four days to do that, which seems excessive...

[pwhodges 2012]

How big is your library?

There are limits to the rate at which the metadata sites can be queried, and Emby goes slowly enough to avoid the sites blocking you; also, do you have intro detection turned on , or thumbnail generation (I forget the exact term) - these are both slow processes?

Paul

[RanmaCanada 495]

10 hours ago, Shade1982 said:

It has now fully populated. Which means it took close to four days to do that, which seems excessive...

It took me over 24 hours for Emby to get everything for One Piece (episodes, specials, movies, etc)..Rate limiting is a thing and metadata sites really don't like it when you basically DDOS them.

[Shade1982 2]

22 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

How big is your library?

There are limits to the rate at which the metadata sites can be queried, and Emby goes slowly enough to avoid the sites blocking you; also, do you have intro detection turned on , or thumbnail generation (I forget the exact term) - these are both slow processes?

Paul

 

19 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said:

It took me over 24 hours for Emby to get everything for One Piece (episodes, specials, movies, etc)..Rate limiting is a thing and metadata sites really don't like it when you basically DDOS them.

But all that data was already there. It wouldn't have needed to retrieve it again, it was already in the database.

Unless changing the user somehow triggered a metadata refresh, that might explain it. But that would be a little strange. I can understand for some metadata, but why wouldn't it show the thumbnail pics that are already there?

Edited June 26, 2025 by Shade1982

[pwhodges 2012]

You moved the AppData folder - so the media paths changed and Emby couldn't know they were the same media without getting the metadata again.

Paul

[Luke 42078]

Did the media actually move, or just the server data folder?

[Shade1982 2]

7 hours ago, pwhodges said:

You moved the AppData folder - so the media paths changed and Emby couldn't know they were the same media without getting the metadata again.

Paul

Ah, I just assumed since the actual media paths didn't change (the media is stored elsewhere) and it looked like those images are stored in the media folder, not the appdata folder...

[Shade1982 2]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Did the media actually move, or just the server data folder?

Only the appdata folder, not the media. The media is stored on a different drive.

[Luke 42078]

Normally you should be able to move the server without disruption. If you have the server log from right after you did that then we might be able to see what happened. Otherwise it's probably too late to tell.

the reason it took so long to repopulate was due to refreshing metadata because that goes out to the internet to fetch new data.

[Shade1982 2]

On 6/28/2025 at 3:11 AM, Luke said:

Normally you should be able to move the server without disruption. If you have the server log from right after you did that then we might be able to see what happened. Otherwise it's probably too late to tell.

the reason it took so long to repopulate was due to refreshing metadata because that goes out to the internet to fetch new data.

Unfortunately not, they have long since been overwritten...

[Luke 42078]

OK thanks for the update.