Server can't cope with my library.....

[Macburp 112]

I've noticed in the last few weeks that it takes the server longer and longer to populate content artwork etc on my Nexus Player running Emby for Android TV. I get timeouts. Some icons never load. Often the 'My Media' section (taking me in to my library) fails to load at all. 

 

This has got worse recently, and I'nm now at the point where I can't load or play any content at all. On my NP I may follow a link to a particular show and it will load the backdrop for that show. And that's it. I can't get access to the content.

 

Thinking it might be network issues I tried Emby for WMC and the web client on the server pc. The web client just fails - Artwork only partially loaded, nothing from 'my media', and if I try to follow a link from the main page nothing happens. With Emby for WMC I can get to a link to the content, but no artwork loads. In any event, the content won't play.

 

I've restarted the server, no impact. If I try to access the server management page from within the webclient that fails. I can load the server page if I right-click on the server icon, and that loads the localhost server config page quickly - as soon as I try to get to my library things get very sluggish and nothing will load past the first page.

 

I noticed that Emby seems to have changed the name of my server for no good reason, so I changed it back. The library is configured with UNC paths eg \\highview\films.

 

At this moment Emby is not doing what it says on the tin. Server log is at - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22367822/server-63573514885.txt

 

Help!!! 

 

 

[Luke 42080]

try removing cover art. there's really no evidence in this log of any problems with the server. all of the incoming requests are being processed quickly.

[plazma 13]

Im not saying your issue is not emby but, considering my library size (I wont say how much, lets just say its pretty big) I would be surprised if its emby.

 

I have seen similar things with faulty network cards, drivers and switches, cables in the past, also due to hard drives going bad, but you already discounted the lan (local test), assuming emby and your data/videos are on the same server, if not your test didn't really prove much, more discount one thing.

 

Next step I would run some speed testing on the drive hosting emby and he drive(s) hosting media and a full health check and to test emby give it only a very small section of your library, if its nothing to do with your library size and is in fact something going bad it should still display a some form of issue with a small library.

 

My guess would be a dying drive (like I said guess), I knew someone who used wd greens in a nas (without modding park feature) and blamed their media centre setup for months, I stayed over (in my drinking days and was to drunk to drive) and heard a lot of park un parks going on, the next morning when I asked him he said yeah they do rattle a bit (I didn't know he used greens at this point) a week later two of four drives eventually bit the dust.

 

I did have to laugh at him a bit when he told be he used greens, although I helped him get the data off and rma the lot (then modding the replacements to turn off the auto park).

Edited July 26, 2015 by plazma

[Macburp 112]

So I uninstalled cover art and some other plug-ins I was not using. Now I can access my media through the web client on the same machine. I'll do some health checks on the drives but I suspect Cover Art was the problem

[plazma 13]

Glad you fixed it, like I said I was just guessing, but a disk health test can never be a bad thing ;-)

[ebr 16185]

So I uninstalled cover art and some other plug-ins I was not using. Now I can access my media through the web client on the same machine. I'll do some health checks on the drives but I suspect Cover Art was the problem

 

Since thousands of folks are using it without this issue, I doubt that was specifically it.  More likely that CA caused some other issue to be magnified or to manifest.  I suspect a bad/failing hard drive as I have seen this type of behavior with those before.

[Macburp 112]

Since thousands of folks are using it without this issue, I doubt that was specifically it.  More likely that CA caused some other issue to be magnified or to manifest.  I suspect a bad/failing hard drive as I have seen this type of behavior with those before.

 

You may be right. After I uninstalled cover art I tried re-installing it to see if it was the culprit and the problem re-occurred, so no cover art for me at the moment. Did a health scan of my disks and two of them have a small number of bad areas, so I'll be trying to fix those over the next few days. Maybe time to spring clean my pc.

 

Does the community recommend any good freeware disk health check / fix software for Windows 7?

[plazma 13]

Ok if you have bad sectors its normally the start of the end, most of the time bad sectors will just grow over time, my advice would be replace the drives immediately and get the data off now before its to late.

 

After that use the free version of hddllf (hdd guru) format the drive, if it wont make a format bin the drive, if it does, do another low level format, if it found more bad sectors during format bin the drive. if the second pass went through no issues and the drive exhibited no funny sounds or hanging during format do a full format (windows ntfs and not quick format). then run a chkdsk (drive letter): /f /c /b if that passes fill the drive with data, once complete run chkdsk as before if it's working at that point and you have no bad sectors, strange noises, its ok to use the drive, but its likely it will get worse in future so I would not trust the drive with any important data, if under warranty get then exchanged instead of doing the above.

 

If you have had two drives fail in a short period, I would question if you have drives you maybe should have disabled auto park on, if the drives had a bad knock (physical stress) or if their enclosure was not cooling properly (enough).

 

If you need anymore just drop me a pm.

Edited July 27, 2015 by plazma

[Swynol 375]

not sure how large your collection is but mine is around 10TB mostly TV series so you can imagine how many individual files that it. my server is a semi low powered one using intel i3 chip. i have no issues with emby server running coverart and a number of other plugins. 

[Conflict 0]

I can confirm that I was having this same exact problem.  I was on the emby-server-beta track so I tried "upgrading" to embody-server-dev.  No love.  Large portions of emby would just not load.  Mostly images, but even the admin dashboard was acting weird.  I noticed that when I went to the dev track CoverArt said it needed to be updated, but instead of updating it I just tried removing it instead and it appears everything is functioning again.  I'm going to run an fsck and make sure it's not also my disk, but I'm fairly confident CA is the culprit.  Any one know the specific reason why CA is acting this way?

[Luke 42080]

I can confirm that I was having this same exact problem.  I was on the emby-server-beta track so I tried "upgrading" to embody-server-dev.  No love.  Large portions of emby would just not load.  Mostly images, but even the admin dashboard was acting weird.  I noticed that when I went to the dev track CoverArt said it needed to be updated, but instead of updating it I just tried removing it instead and it appears everything is functioning again.  I'm going to run an fsck and make sure it's not also my disk, but I'm fairly confident CA is the culprit.  Any one know the specific reason why CA is acting this way?

 

Hi, welcome. Cover Art will have some cpu impact because images have to be created on the fly. It brings a lot of nice benefits, but obviously it's a trade-off that you'll need to consider.

[Conflict 0]

Just as an update.  I checked my disk for bad sectors and there were not any.  So I'm pretty sure the culprit is CoverArt.  Hopefully someone can look into this.

 

> sudo badblocks -v /dev/sda > /tmp/bad-blocks.txt

Checking blocks 0 to 732574583

Checking for bad blocks (read-only test):

done

Pass completed, 0 bad blocks found. (0/0/0 errors)

[Conflict 0]

Hi, thanks for the welcome.

 

Ok so it's not a 'bug' in CoverArt?  It's just that since it takes up a lot of CPU on the fly the images aren't loading?  Do you know if this would affect other aspects of the site like the admin dash not properly loading?

 

Also, could you please explain to me the differences of using the stable/beta/dev tracks?  Are there major features in dev not found in stable?  Can dev sometimes be more stable because bugs are fixed quicker?  Just how unstable is dev? etc

[Luke 42080]

if you can recreate the issue and provide the Emby Server log:

 

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/739-how-to-report-a-problem/

 

Then we can take a look and see if it might be related to anything else besides cpu. Thanks.

[legallink 187]

I had similar issues previously, but for me the answer was moving my metadata storage to an SSD.  That sped things up dramatically.  CA wasn't my issue as much as I think slow drives.

[Fratopolis 63]

It cost money but ive been using it for over a decade

 

Hddreg

 

Lol im still using two 160gig western digital drives i scavenge when i first found the product in an old server.

 

It doesnt mark bad sectors it litterally recovers them if it is not physical damaged. This can be caused by power outages and bumps to the computer while running. Even had my work buy it. Saves us from buying replacement drives since kids knock the computers all the time.

 

If the board and or magnets are going out well then please replace lol. My rule of thumb so far is if the bad sectors are scattered randomly then its going bad. It will even log the bad sectors if using it via usb to tell you if the same ones went bad again. This means the disk has wear in those areas.

Edited June 10, 2016 by Fratopolis

[joshroblee 4]

I had a similar problem a while a go, not sure if it is the same thing you have but this is something to try,

check the load time for the images on a single movie/tv show then change the setting in the pic and put the tick in then refresh the said movie/tv show and see if it speeds up.

 

Jamie

 

PS, when I said refresh the movie/TV show I meant a full refresh with images.

 

Edited June 10, 2016 by joshroblee

[Luke 42080]

We now have Emby Server for Western Digital NAS in testing:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/59597-emby-server-for-western-digital-nas

 

Please try it out and report your experience. Thanks !