Update to 4.9.1.80 disregards previous entered metadata

[PaoloS1970 0]

Hi, I hope my painful experience with the last update can spare some bad time to other customers.

The update 4.9.1.80 has provoked a huge mess in my quite big library. Metadata that wasn't supposed to be modified by any reason in Movies and Music Video at least has been modified ans reset to things that make no sense at all. Locked community ratings (in which I enter my own ratigns) are reset too, everywhere.

Personalised picture I have entered for people have disappeared, and collections of music videos are gone too. I've to re enter evertyhing manually again and it will take me months ... I'm really deceived.

[heffeque 78]

@Luke Are you expecting to fix this on future versions, or will this be an issue for everyone updating? (due to the extensive DB changes).

Edited October 13, 2025 by heffeque

[Dusan78 19]

Is there any news on this issue?  I am afraid to do the update if all my adjusted metadata will be gone.

[fox1986 11]

Also worried as about this. If this update is really gonna wipe and reset metadata, we definitely need to know or even more important, a quick fix.

[fox1986 11]

Little update here: (I carefully made an backup before just in case) I was just updating my DS124 (DSM 7.2+) with Envy Server 4.8.11 to the recent Emby Version (manual install of the package, no docker involved) and none of my locked or unlocked metadata was wiped or altered.

So its probably not a general problem everyone will face. I can just recommend to backup metadata before just in case.

 

[heffeque 78]

Would restoring a backup of 4.8.11 metadata work on 4.9.x?

Taking into consideration that there are tons of DB changes, it might not be the case.

[Dusan78 19]

I am planning to make a full backup and copy all the metadata and cache folders.  You have to go into ssh and just copy the main embyserver folder with all the databases and rest of the files.  If anything happens you can then reinstall the older version of the server and restore everything back the way it was.  I will probably do it sometimes during the week when I grab a free minute.  But, I don't see many people posting so I assume that this could be rare occurrence. 

[paranoidkev 2]

Ugh.  Past upgrades have gone well but the upgrade to 4.9 killed all of the meta data I have accumulated for the last 7 years.  Luckily I stored them in NFOs but re-crawling a library with 7000 titles is so painful.  

[Dusan78 19]

Can you share anything that would have made your install different from the average?  Perhaps there is something causing this problem that we can narrow it to.

[paranoidkev 2]

I just downlaoded the package and ran it with dpkg -i.  As I normally have done in the past.

[Dusan78 19]

Oh I see.  I think people usually stop the emby service in the package installer and then select the manual install and choose the file. 

I wonder if there is any difference.

[PaoloS1970 0]

5 hours ago, Dusan78 said:

Oh I see.  I think people usually stop the emby service in the package installer and then select the manual install and choose the file. 

I wonder if there is any difference.

In my case this is exactly what I did when I updated.

[fox1986 11]

1 hour ago, PaoloS1970 said:

In my case this is exactly what I did when I updated.

Same here. I stopped the emby server and loaded the previously downloaded install file through OSM UI and not via console. Meta files stayed fine for me.

[paranoidkev 2]

Yes I stopped the emby service.  I shut it down from the console.  Then did the dpkg -i 

[Dusan78 19]

I can also confirm that I have also lost my custom metadata entries as well as some custom movie posters.  This is not good but, I don't plan to go through everything.  Most of my custom entries are from non english movie categories.  Still this should have been handled better.

[mrmixed 77]

On 10/19/2025 at 9:18 PM, Dusan78 said:

I am planning to make a full backup and copy all the metadata and cache folders.  You have to go into ssh and just copy the main embyserver folder with all the databases and rest of the files.  If anything happens you can then reinstall the older version of the server and restore everything back the way it was.  I will probably do it sometimes during the week when I grab a free minute.  But, I don't see many people posting so I assume that this could be rare occurrence. 

This was a good idea and I wish I had thought of it prior to upgrading.  But I had never had a problem with an update breaking things before.

I see lots of references elsewhere on the forum regarding a "system.old" directory.  Is this only for Windows installs?  Is there any equivalent option for a Synology non-portable installation?

I having also been having problems with metadata as well as sporadically losing custom images following the 4.9 update.  The metadata is mostly attributable to changes to how Emby handles folders (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/143009-emby-folder-display-issue/page/5/), but I don't know why I have lost the images.  I've been assuming it's related to thrashing the server by repeatedly restoring my database backup for testing (I still have a working 4.8 database), because it seems to get worse every time.  Regardless, my ultimate goal at this point is to roll back to 4.8 and stay there.  I'm not sure what the ramifications are if I uninstall 4.9 and reinstall 4.8 and then restore my backup on top of it.  I assume swapping out some binaries from a system.old would be less invasive but I haven't found anything that resembles a program backup on the server yet.

 

[fox1986 11]

I am also quite unhappy how updates are communicated here in general. I don't want to dig out a change log somewhere posted on the forum as customer and guess which of the changes might be breaking changes.

Another prime example was the sudden popup un my emby app that administration via app is not possible anymore. Turns out there was a update of the server that rendered the whole update feature of the app useless.

Things like that, or possible changes that affect possible data loss like with meta files should be announced more visible on the website or blog with a warning included that a breaking change might affect users.

This communication is vital to keep customers happy. This unrealibilty is one of the main reasons I hesitate going to buy emby premiere 

[GrimReaper 4739]

6 hours ago, fox1986 said:

I am also quite unhappy how updates are communicated here in general. I don't want to dig out a change log somewhere posted on the forum as customer

Not sure how would you like the changes to be communicated in addition to currently available ways (visiting forum is not mandatory at all):

1) in your server Dashboard, click on version number - you'll get changelogs for both (multiple) stable and beta versions

2) Visit Github page

3) Visit dedicated/pinned Forum topic

4) Follow beta thread

Any suggestion is welcome. 

Edited November 16, 2025 by GrimReaper

[fox1986 11]

It depends on your customer base. If you provide software updates to other IT developers/companies, GitHub descriptions and change log files might be sufficient.

But you offer software to end consumers for a monthly fee. They usually don't tinker around with GitHub or know the basics of software administration. They just want the software to work without any problems and if there is something they need to be aware of before and update, they need active information via newsletter and more importantly: popup before the update process is starting with warnings about breaking changes and the chance to click continue or cancel.

 

[GrimReaper 4739]

54 minutes ago, fox1986 said:

and more importantly: popup before the update process is starting with warnings about breaking changes and the chance to click continue or cancel.

Basically any change can be a breaking change for someone - simply due to a sheer number of configurations/setups and databases in circulation (there are 10+ years old incrementally updated databases around), it is illusory expecting that all changes will work on all systems all the time, or which one should fall into "breaking" category, hence the beta cycle (granted, Emby's releases might not be ideal, there should be at least another, Alpha/Nightly level IMHO, but that is a topic for another discussion) in order to reach, as far as practically possible, wider usebase. But what works for one doesn't have to necessarily work for another (and it often doesn't) - and vice-versa. You don't get a pop-up, but you can easily get a sort-of: disable Automatic updates. You'll be notified in your Dashboard that a new server version is available (hence "sort-of" popup), but it will require active user interaction to actually update (you can inform yourself of changes from the same Dashboard, as per previous post, and decide whether to proceed with the update or disregard it/cancel). 

Regardless of that, instead of relying/hoping/expecting that someone can divine or guess how will the update process go on your particular setup, you can:

1) Have a viable backup strategy in place (that does not apply to Emby only, but should be a common/general practice) 

2) Do not jump on the latest-and-greatest version immediately upon release (disable Automatic updates as per above), give it few days and/or weeks until early adopters report ongoing issues, any widespread issues will/should be dealt with relatively quickly, by maintenance release following shortly thereafter; FWIW my main server is still on 4.8.11 0, my testbed server with portion of my library and subset of users is on 4.9.1.90 until I'm confident enough that it's reasonably safe to bring my main server up-to-date (and I have a beta instance to help testing latest version and another stable instance for forum troubleshooting and another beta instance for same purpose... ). 

In short: hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and you'll hardly ever be caught off-guard. 

Cheers

Edited November 16, 2025 by GrimReaper

[fox1986 11]

From perspective as a IT developer, I can partly agree with your arguments. From a end consumer perspective however, "prepare for the worst" still sounds like a non consumer friendly update policy to me.

For sure there are many different configurations out there, and you can't test them all, but I guess there must be at least some unit tests to check if App, Server and Meta data remain compatible in their communication? If that "master chain" breaks due to an update, you can issue a EOL warning to the customers and tell: You have to upgrade Server at least to version X as new app version Y won't support older versions and reached end of life.

This information is much more helpful for the user than just "expecting the worst" I think.

[GrimReaper 4739]

Client apps do have minimum server version required (currently at 4.7.14.0 AFAIK) and it truly could be communicated better, maybe by denoting it in each app store page and/or as a changelog note whenever min. server version is bumped. @Luke

On the other hand, min. server version required is always few versions (at least a branch, often two) behind, which generally gives more than enough time to update to some more recent version, even if it's not the latest one.

Edited November 16, 2025 by GrimReaper

[mrmixed 77]

I've only been using Emby since 4.7, and the 4.8 update went very well and added a lot of new and helpful functionality, so I didn't really think twice about the jump to 4.9.  Normally I would be somewhat conservative regarding software updates and would plan to wait a couple of weeks to see what bugs shake out before installing a new version.  But I did review the change log, and saw a lot of references to "added option" or things being "fixed", especially in terms of folders (which @GrimReaperknows I use a lot), and naively just thought this was going to be more improvements to the folder UI along the lines of the the various multi-select options added in 4.8.  Little did I know...

While I certainly understand that there is an incredibly wide variety of configurations in the Emby user base, it is not helpful for the devs to deliberately plan changes that they know are going to be breaking, when it would have been almost the same amount of work to build in a toggle instead.  (example: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/127824-emby-making-double-folders/#findComment-1347055)  I would forgive an accidental change that broke something; however, I'm less inclined to be gracious when it's a deliberate change.  And in this particular example, it's a half-baked change to start with, one that looks like a bug (because it inconsistently changes how folders work for movies vs TV), but was somehow done on purpose (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/142763-folder-view-issue-last-time-i-report-this/#findComment-1472332). And now @Lukekeeps having to respond to people like myself who justifiably think it's a bug.)

To focus more on the current topic, given that I am now faced with a breaking change which has no workaround in the current release, nor in the conceivable future (based on the feedback received so far), I was thinking that my best option would be to blow up my environment to restore 4.8, but am now realizing that the Emby App for my TV has a significant risk that it will stop working in the future if anyone in my family runs an update on it in some future time when 4.8 servers are no longer supported.  I'm already annoyed that I went with the Synology installation for convenience and power savings when in retrospect I really should have chosen to build the server on Windows had I known the software was going to be managed in a willfully arbitrary way that I would need to be able to control rollbacks.  Now I'm realizing I also need to store all of the app APKs because chances are I'm going to need to roll them back sometime, too.  And I will have to scour the various APK mirror sites if I ever need to provision a new device to run "old" Emby.  This is not the convenient and flexible content organization system I thought I was signing up for lifetime use a mere two years ago.

There is no good path forward for me within the Emby ecosystem without a more considerate and flexible approach from the devs.

[fox1986 11]

14 minutes ago, mrmixed said:

I've only been using Emby since 4.7, and the 4.8 update went very well and added a lot of new and helpful functionality, so I didn't really think twice about the jump to 4.9.  Normally I would be somewhat conservative regarding software updates and would plan to wait a couple of weeks to see what bugs shake out before installing a new version.  But I did review the change log, and saw a lot of references to "added option" or things being "fixed", especially in terms of folders (which @GrimReaperknows I use a lot), and naively just thought this was going to be more improvements to the folder UI along the lines of the the various multi-select options added in 4.8.  Little did I know...

While I certainly understand that there is an incredibly wide variety of configurations in the Emby user base, it is not helpful for the devs to deliberately plan changes that they know are going to be breaking, when it would have been almost the same amount of work to build in a toggle instead.  (example: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/127824-emby-making-double-folders/#findComment-1347055)  I would forgive an accidental change that broke something; however, I'm less inclined to be gracious when it's a deliberate change.  And in this particular example, it's a half-baked change to start with, one that looks like a bug (because it inconsistently changes how folders work for movies vs TV), but was somehow done on purpose (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/142763-folder-view-issue-last-time-i-report-this/#findComment-1472332). And now @Lukekeeps having to respond to people like myself who justifiably think it's a bug.)

To focus more on the current topic, given that I am now faced with a breaking change which has no workaround in the current release, nor in the conceivable future (based on the feedback received so far), I was thinking that my best option would be to blow up my environment to restore 4.8, but am now realizing that the Emby App for my TV has a significant risk that it will stop working in the future if anyone in my family runs an update on it in some future time when 4.8 servers are no longer supported.  I'm already annoyed that I went with the Synology installation for convenience and power savings when in retrospect I really should have chosen to build the server on Windows had I known the software was going to be managed in a willfully arbitrary way that I would need to be able to control rollbacks.  Now I'm realizing I also need to store all of the app APKs because chances are I'm going to need to roll them back sometime, too.  And I will have to scour the various APK mirror sites if I ever need to provision a new device to run "old" Emby.  This is not the convenient and flexible content organization system I thought I was signing up for lifetime use a mere two years ago.

There is no good path forward for me within the Emby ecosystem without a more considerate and flexible approach from the devs.

Just to warn you about a 4.8 downgrade of emby server on Synology: From my experience, the recent App versions are not fully compatible with it anymore (you can't access the administration via app anymore).

 

[Luke 42077]

4 hours ago, fox1986 said:

Just to warn you about a 4.8 downgrade of emby server on Synology: From my experience, the recent App versions are not fully compatible with it anymore (you can't access the administration via app anymore).

 

Hi, the apps will work just fine with the 4.7.14 and above. There is one exception, which is library options in Emby library setup. It lets you know that you need to switch to your web app in order to edit the library options.