Collections Disappeared

[daniel.bmyer 11]

Using Emby on my Invidia Shield TV and the EMby Docker on my unraid server. For some reason both my server and my shield tv are no longer showing my movie collections. What's odd is if I go to \\TOWER\appdata\EmbyServer\data\collections I can see all my movie collections. It's just not picking them up.

 

I can browse my individual movies no problem. Collections just shows No Items Found

 

@@cayars

@@Happy2Play

[Carlo 4561]

Has any of your mounts changed?

Did you create the collections by hand or did you use the Auto Box Set plugin?

[daniel.bmyer 11]

I created the collections manually.  None of my mounts changed.  The only issue I had was my cache drive was dying so I did a backup of my drive, then replaced it and did a restore.  Everything came back (meaning all my dockers) fine.  Only thing not working is my collections.

 

Is there a way to get them recognized?

[daniel.bmyer 11]

If I go to Emby Server and click on Library, it's showing the path as /config/data/collections.

 

I went back in and created a new collection to see if it works.  I created one called Westerns, which is one I haven't used before. Sure enough, if I go to the Collections folder on the drive, the collection is created there.  

Edited May 2, 2020 by daniel.bmyer

[Carlo 4561]

What happens if you open one of the collection text files in a text edit and look at it.  Is the path correct?

[daniel.bmyer 11]

Yup, path is correct, it's /Movies.  I attached one file.

collection.xml

Edited May 2, 2020 by daniel.bmyer

[Carlo 4561]

We could play ping-pong with questions/answers all day long but I think it might be best to take a look at your actual system since your issues are quite unusual.

 

If possible I'd like to TeamView into your system while you are present (I do nothing without approval/blessing of admin) and check a few things.  I prfer to use online chat (built in) and ask you to perform things while I watch (can explain what to do). I really don't know what might be wrong but I know common things to check that I can rapidly go through/check that would take us a couple of days to go over in the forums.  We can certainly go that route if you prefer but I'd like to offer you one-on-one support to try and solve this for you quickly OR find out what's not working correctly and forward it to the devs for remediation.

 

Shoot me a PM (feel free to CC Luke and/or ebr) and let me know what time zone are you in.

Pick a time you would like to schedule a time for me to remote in to your system and give me it in EST (time zone) or New York City/Washington DC time zone.  I'll both verify I'm available and check my time zone against yours to make sure we are calculate time zones correctly.  

 

I'll give you instructions on installing TeamViewer in PM. Then login at scheduled time and we'll see what we can find together.

 

Carlo

 

PS let me know if you have any questions.

[daniel.bmyer 11]

So in working with Carlo, we managed to get this somewhat resolved.  We ended up using the Auto Box Setup to try to rebuild my Collections.  It did for the most part.  I still had to edit some of the collections and recreate a few from scratch.

 

I suspect the issue may have to do with the rights of the files, from the backup to restore but not entirely sure.

 

Anyhow, much appreciate Carlo's help.

[berrick 30]

HI All,

 

Just to add in case this is not as unusual as it seems.

 

I suffered a similar issue this week after doing a fresh install of Emby and restoring setting's using the Backup plugin. Collection folder empty but in the library everything appears correct, the movies in collections where all in a dedicated folder and the folder contained a collection.xml file.

 

As I didnt have too many collections I manually added them back

[paddy-emby 2]

I had this same problem following a server migration. I moved a VM with Emby server running inside as a Docker image.

The existing collections in 'config\data\collections' didn't appear in the library. My playlists also didn't show.

The server configuration and paths were exactly as before (for media and configs). Creating a new collection worked fine, added to the same folder, with the same permissions, and the same information as the old collections, but the old ones wouldn't appear.

As per the suggestions above I used the 'Auto Box Sets' plugin and it recreated all my old collections succesfully.

As per a suggestion from Luke here I rescanned the metadata and the playlists came back.

Not sure what the issue was since I moved the VM as a whole and all network paths to media libraries were recreated prior to spinning the Docker container back up...

[Luke 42081]

Hi there, did you check out our guide on migrating collections?

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Collections-–-Manual-Migration

[paddy-emby 2]

Thanks Luke. I didn't know that existed prior to doing my server move.

That guide talks about changing paths to media files, but since I moved the whole VirtualMachine containing Emby (and Docker), all paths have remained unchanged: "/data/movies/______".

 

 

[Luke 42081]

Did you do everything in that guide?

[Carlo 4561]

17 hours ago, paddy-emby said:

Thanks Luke. I didn't know that existed prior to doing my server move.

That guide talks about changing paths to media files, but since I moved the whole VirtualMachine containing Emby (and Docker), all paths have remained unchanged: "/data/movies/______".

 

 

Can you post one of the collection.xml files from your system for us to look at?

[paddy-emby 2]

old_collection.xml is the old collection file. This didn't show up in Emby.

After running the Auto Box Set plugin the collection showed in Emby and the file was new_collection.xml.

They are the same...

I have Emby running as a docker container inside an Ubunutu Server VM. The docker `/data/movies` is mapped to the ubuntu location `\media\nas`. `\media\nas` is a mount point for my nas server share. I migrated the VM as a whole between servers so nothing should have changed there. However I wonder if when I restarted the docker container the nas server share wasn't properly remounted. Does Emby have an internal store of the collection data that might have got broken trying to access a blank location? I tried a few times to 'Scan library files' but the collections didn't return. I don't know if I tried to 'refresh metadata' though.

new_collection.xml old_collection.xml

[Carlo 4561]

Yea, I don't see any difference between the two files either.

Keep us updated how this works going forward as it could have been an issue as you stated from the VM setup early on.

[cryhavoc 4]

just noticed my collections content is gone, no changes to the server; no mounting points changed--nothing.  to add happiness to the burn, the collections top folder image still shows the fanart of the collections I HAD created.  wtf.

I am happy to have an option from plex, but I have had it with the silliness that continues to come up with emby.  too much time spent working on the fing metadata I never had to do with plex and now this.

still satisfied with my lifetime support paid, but not happy I cannot depend on simple shit like this.  and again, I provide this as feedback, not interested in the back and forth trying to find a way to put the problem on my end.  NOTHING CHANGED except the content is gone.

great to have options unless they equally piss one off.

 

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by cryhavoc

[Happy2Play 9782]

This topic title may be correct, but issues today are not the same as issues a year ago.

The server itself changed from the required plugin to embedded in server now.  And happened during the upgrade/migration process to 4.6.

Now it created off of item metadata from new nodes and library setting.  What is your library setting (this is a per library setting).

If you write nfo files, can you check an item that belongs to a collection to see if it has the <set> node.