[dr-oopie]

hello all, so i was loving path substitution to free up the thumbnails folder on my devices so 1 folder can be used across all my devices but now im having problems. everything was working fine. but now, no thumbs are showing up at all. tried clearing the folder and nothing. just shows the title text. here is part of the error log.

Code:

18:11:24  28.955694 T:1679270816  NOTICE: CreateThumbnailFromSurface: unable to create thumbnail special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/e/e83a0fe1.jpg 360x540
18:11:24  28.995514 T:1679270816 WARNING: SMBFile::OpenForWrite() called with overwriting enabled! - smb://192.1.1.100/Movies-2/.Thumbs/e/e83a0fe1.jpg
18:11:24  29.000801 T:1679270816   ERROR: SMBFile->Open: Unable to open file : 'smb://192.1.1.100/Movies-2/.Thumbs/e/e83a0fe1.jpg'
                                            unix_err:'6e' error : 'Connection timed out'

again, everything was working fine. no changes have been made. now the folder is empty since i thought i would recache them. i also shortened the name from .Thumbnails to .Thumbs but noticed that folder wasnt created on the drive.

that drive is on a windows share that lets me write from any device in the home so not sure what the issue is.

[Milhouse]

Most likely a Windows issue, restart the server.

However path substitution of Thumbnails in order to share a single folder between multiple clients is a really bad idea, and is not supported as it will eventually result in problems and potentially data corruption. Read the Thumbnails section on the Wiki.

[dr-oopie]

AHH. well since having that thumbs folder that is over 3gb, i was hoping to just have it remote on my network. for example my tv prob will run out of memory just by the thumbnails but works great/smooth for playback.

[Milhouse]

The whole point of the Thumbnails folder is to be a local cache to improve performance. Sticking the cache on a network share (particularly smb://) largely eliminates this performance benefit, however if you have a device that lacks local storage then simply give it it's own dedicated Thumbnails folder on your network (this *is* a supported solution) but don't share a single Thumbnails folder between all of your devices (this is not supported).

If you do have devices that are suffering from a bloated cache then you might want to investigate the various addons/scripts that can prune the cache down to a more manageable size (one example is in my sig). Regular pruning of the texture cache may mean you don't need to use a network share at all.

[agb2]

@ Milhouse
Related question - how about sharing a Thumbnails folder between different profiles on the same device?
Would that also need a shared Textures.db ?

[Milhouse]

The Thumbnails folder and Textures.db are an indivisible pair - the rows in the Textures13.db reflect the contents of the Thumbnails folder so if you share a Thumbnails folder but access it using two different Textures13.db files then you're always going to have problems as the database is no longer consistent with the content of the folder (files added to the folder will have rows in the other database that won't be present in the second database etc.).

That said, sharing a Thumbnails folder between different profiles on the same device should be OK so long as you also share the Textures13.db between profiles.

[agb2]

@ Milhouse

Great, will give that a whirl.
I have several profiles, one is a strict subset of another - so makes sense to share in that case.

[agb2]

@ Milhouse

Hmm. A snag - I can see how to remap the Database folder using path substitution - but no idea how to
remap an individual database. I presume it's not safe to share Addons, ViewModes etc.

Any advice?

PS. NM, shared the Thumbnails via path substitution, used symbolic links for the db - seems OK :-}