Television Episodes Labeled "Missing" (Symlinks to external drives)

[vash265 0]

Hello -

 

I've noticed this issue in the last couple of releases of emby-server for Linux, though I'm not sure how long it's existed.  I currently have two external drives with my content.  I point Emby to a directory on an internal drive that stores symlinks to the files on the external.  For example:

 

/home/media/television/Series Name/Episode 1.mkv -> /mnt/mediaDrive1/television/Series Name/Episode 1.mkv

/home/media/television/Series Name/Episode 2.mkv -> /mnt/mediaDrive2/television/Series Name/Episode 2.mkv

 

It seems that when I have a television series split across multiple external harddrives (as above), Emby produces a lot of erroneous "missing" labels for the series.  If I move all of the content for a specific show to a single external drive it seems to resolve the issue, but otherwise I can't get Emby to properly identify all of the episodes in the show.  

 

Any ideas what's going on here?

 

Thanks!

 

Edit - I should note that I'm using 4.2.1.0, and that it isn't a scraping issue.  All television episodes have the same format (whether they're labeled as missing in Emby or not) and adhere to the standard sXXeXX convention.

 

Second Edit - Probably also worth noting that Emby downloads the .nfo files correctly for each episode, so it's definitely *definitely* not a scraping issue.  

Edited August 26, 2019 by vash265

[Luke 42078]

Hi there, are you able to play the files? Does this only happen with the sym linked files?

[vash265 0]

Hi there, are you able to play the files? Does this only happen with the sym linked files?

 

As far as I can determine it's only sym linked files, and only if the series is split across drives.

 

I've gotten one of the missing ones to play before, but currently can't.  If I try to play one of the missing files I just get a spinning green loading sign and nothing of note that I can see in the logs (I don't even see it trying to play the file).

[Luke 42078]

This is almost certainly due to the limitations in the .net core runtime regarding sym links:

 

https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/26310

[vash265 0]

This is almost certainly due to the limitations in the .net core runtime regarding sym links:

 

https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/26310

 

Bummer.  Guess I'll just have to find a way to work around it.

 

Thanks!

[Luke 42078]

Yea it's just something we're going to have to wait on. Thanks for the feedback.

[vash265 0]

Yea it's just something we're going to have to wait on. Thanks for the feedback.

 

I will say that it's completely inconsistent.  For example, I have season 3 of twin peaks stored on one harddrive, and seasons 1 and 2 stored on another.  Season 3 was added to the library first, and all episodes show up.  Seasons 1 and 2 were added more recently, and this is what the lineup for season 2 (for example) looks like: 

 

 

 

There's no discernable difference between any of the video files, and all of the nfo files for all of the episodes in season 2 are present (meaning they were scraped).  Is the behavior with .net just completely unpredictable or is there something else going on?

[Luke 42078]

It is unpredictable. There is actually some support for symlinks, but it's not complete and they don't always get followed automatically depending on what file API's are being used.