Why does XBMC hate internal hard drives so?
#1
So, I was preparing an xbmc box for my sister to use, thinking in my latest insanity that, with some remote attention, it might *actually* be ready for a normal person to use. When, at the last minute, I realised than on restart it loses track of any video source on any internal drive.

A few tests later seem to bear this out.

The machine has a second internal drive, with a volume mounted from /dev/sdb1 to /media/Carousel. And it has an external firewire drive, with a volume mounted from /dev/sdc1 to /media/Biblio. Mount points, directories all have the same permissions etc.

XBMC->Videos->Files sees Biblio without me having to do anything. But I have to add Carousel as a new video source. OK, I think, that's a one-time operation, I'll do that. So I do it, and I set content on folders within and scan everything, everything's working...

Restart XBMC, the Carousel video source has gone. The library items on it are still there but obviously i can't do update library.

Repeat in disbelief a few times. With logging.

I note a set of UDisks lines where it detects *both* drives on startup, with nothing to tell them apart except one's removable and the other isn't. It even shows that it adds *both* of them. But Carousel goes mysteriously absent by the time a user can see anything, with nothing further being logged about that.

This is what I am currently having to do, to make it work:

mkdir /media/Biblio/Carousel
mount -o bind /media/Carousel /media/Biblio/Carousel

Now I can navigate to the content folders in /media/Biblio/Carousel, set content, scan, and it's all remembered on a restart.

Which rather puts paid to my future plans to consolidate things - possibly combined with an upgrade of that internal drive - so that everything is on the internal drive, and ditch the external one. I guess I'd have to leave a USB stick plugged in JUST SO I CAN MOUNT THE INTERNAL DRIVE INSIDE IT, so XBMC would remember it.

This is ppa:xbmc-xvba but i don't expect the xvba stuff has anything different regarding this.
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#2
ok, doesn't affect frodo; just post-frodo. ppa:xbmc-xvba-frodo is fine.
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#3
Can you retry with code from today? There was a minor sql fix - that caused this.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#4
I'm confused. Why aren't you just setting everything up in /etc/fstab?
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#5
(2013-04-07, 16:47)pumkinut Wrote: I'm confused. Why aren't you just setting everything up in /etc/fstab?

I was. It was all set up correctly in /etc/fstab. The *OS* wasn't forgetting that the filesystem was mounted; just XBMC.

(2013-04-07, 16:47)pumkinut Wrote: I'm confused. Why aren't you just setting everything up in /etc/fstab?

I can see you might have assumed otherwise from the way they were mounted in /media. In fact originally they were mounted conventionally in /mnt; i only tried moving them to /media with uhelper=udisks2 on the fstab line (so they'd get nice drive icons in the unity launcher, if i was using unity on this box) in the hope that that would solve the problem. It made no difference.

(2013-04-07, 14:29)fritsch Wrote: Can you retry with code from today? There was a minor sql fix - that caused this.

I'll have to try that tomorrow now. I forgot to subscribe to the thread; only just remembered to check back for replies. :-) This is actually that mac mini with gt320m that i'm now giving to my sister to be a remotely-managed xbmc box for her, to replace a dead iMac that can no longer serve content to her appletv (which was always a PITA anyway). So she'll be getting it with xvba-frodo in any case, but as I have it for a bit longer (because of this problem in fact; without it she'd have taken it this morning) I can test that first.
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#6
fernet's master isn't building right now (fails in LinuxRendererGL.cpp); i expect that'll be fixed later...
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#7
Latest xbmc-xvba-testing build, Git:bd3c513 (compiled: Apr 8 2013) does *NOT* fix this problem. Internal-drive video source is still lost on xbmc restart.
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#8
It is not xbmc's job to mount disks. Is the disk mounted on boot?
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#9
the disk is mounted in /etc/fstab

besides which it doesn't even take a reboot to make xbmc forget it. routine is:

Start XBMC with fresh/absent ~/.xbmc; both Biblio and Carousel mounted in OS already.
Go to Video->Files. See Biblio (the external disk) there automatically.
Add Carousel (the internal disk) in the normal way. It all works.
Exit XBMC.
Start XBMC. Go to Video->Files.
Carousel is gone.
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#10
Is it still in sources.xml?
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#11
It probably wasn't. Sorry I can't be more definite than that right now, I'd have to reinstall the newer build, park my working ~/.xbmc and test again and not able/willing to do that right now

But when I tested previously I, not knowing what file it would be in, tried:

find .xbmc -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep Carousel

And the only matches it found were in the binary db files. So my guess is no.

My immediate term fix is to 'deploy' this (to my sister) with frodo on it, which makes sense anyway, and after I do that I won't have a system where this can readily be tested - the issue doesn't arise with my own main xbmc box as the video sources are on externals and/or raid arrays (and furthermore, were set up a while ago, a stable configuration). But it would be nice to know it's fixed, so I don't have to be afraid to upgrade my sister's system later.
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#12
I'm a newbie to Linux and really don't want to get too technical, but I'm having the same problem as Rachel.
I have just loaded Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and XBMC V12.3 FRODO. I have 2 internal drives, the primary one with music and the other with films.
Every time I start the machine and run XBMC, the link to the films library is lost. But if I perform a search on that second disc before starting XBMC, and then go into XBMC, it's ok.
It's like the search is doing an automatic mount.
How can I avoid having to do this everytime?

Thanks for any help. Andy
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#13
This is a very old thread, good on you for necroing!

Is your second drive in /etc/fstab? Try using the mount command and other testing tools before you do the search (you don't actually say what tool you are using for search).
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Why does XBMC hate internal hard drives so?0