[SOLVED]Upgraded server - XBMC won't play
#1
Hi all,

So I decided to centralise all my external NAS drives into an actual server for convenience but sadly this seems to be a big mistake.

After getting everything ready I booted up one of my XBMC installs (Dharma) and edited the sources to reflect the new paths. No problems there, library updated and everything seemed fine but when I go to play anything back I get a failure message. First off it takes ages to do anything after hitting play and then I get the failed to playback, check logs message. Looking in the logs there are heaps of entries saying that it can't connect to the old paths (which I thought would have been removed when I edited them to the new location). It also says it timed out waiting for the buffer to empty.

The server is a Windows 7 machine with all drives shared on a gigabit network, am I missing something really obvious here?

Additionally I have a couple of Eden based machines downstairs, 1 of which is just freezing up since the change over (the other I dare not touch at this point).

Do I need to just do a fresh install of XBMC to sort this out? Surely a media server setup shouldn't be that different to a NAS setup should it?

Please help!!!
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#2
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that all paths in the library database will still point to the old location and you cannot change this unless you edit the database (which could be, as far as I know, done if MySQL is being used as the database. I don't remember what the format of the internal/default database is in, if it's even possible to edit that).
Therefore, when you move servers etc, the new shares and paths have to be the same as the old ones.

As mentioned, you might be able to edit the paths in the database, but I have no idea as to its format etc.
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#3
Easiest way might be to delete the existing sources, clean library and then add the sources again.

Changing the path of your sources is somewhat of a pain, that's why I always suggest people use UNC paths and look at a central storage solution right off the bat.
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#4
(2012-04-06, 13:23)Kirky99 Wrote: Easiest way might be to delete the existing sources, clean library and then add the sources again.

Changing the path of your sources is somewhat of a pain, that's why I always suggest people use UNC paths and look at a central storage solution right off the bat.

I'll try that and see how I go, I'm a bit suss on the NIC but one step at a time eh?

What was meant to be a simple server upgrade turned out to be more painful than expexted lol
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#5
phunge is correct. You can't just change the source that way. Here is how you should have done it.

Export library as separate files. This places all your images and .nfo in the folders with each content item. Move everything to the NAS. In XBMC remove the old sources. It will ask to remove the items from the library. Choose yes. Add new NAS source and set the content. XBMC will then scan and use all the exported data to add the items back to the library. You will loose watched/unwatched status though and any resume points.

Now that you have done what you have. Get something that will allow you to edit the SQLite databases. Go in and find/replace the paths. I've not done this, but assume it should work if done properly.
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#6
Thanks kricker, I'll certainly keep that in mind in future!

I'm pretty confident the issue with playback is hardware related in the server. I set up a test source on a different PC on the same network, deleted existing sources, created a new source (the test one), updated the library and then tried to play the movie - success!

So my first suspicion is the network port on the server, failing that, the motherboard.

Will keep you updated.
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#7
Apart from me going about things the silly way it's all sorted out now. The hardware in the server was the problem, a faulty network port which was restricting traffic to a ridiculous crawl at best.

Moved to new hardware and BAM! Problem solved. All working now and nice and quick. The one night I had to do without XBMC was hell!
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[SOLVED]Upgraded server - XBMC won't play0