Library mixed up on fresh installs

derekvm · February 10, 2018 at 10:35 PM

Hi,

Apologies for the wall of text but I wanted to make sure I get all relevant info in my post. Hopefully it doesn’t turn away anyone that can help me.

I recently built an unRAID media server and am now in the process of trying to upgrade an Intel HTPC and a RPi2 to LibreELEC v8.2.3 but I’m hitting a major issue with TV shows in my library getting mixed together.

A few things to note:

All my media is scraped externally from Kodi with metadata stored in individual files in the relevant folder.
I have another server running Windows 7/FlexRAID that was the source of my data now on the unRAID server. I simply copied it all to the new unRAID server over my network.
The Windows 7 server is working fine with no issues, however the HTPC is currently running OpenELEC 6.0.3 and the RPi2 LibreELEC 7.0.3.
The Windows 7 server is using SMB shares. I have tried using both NFS and SMB shares with the unRAID server with the same results.

I have tried fresh installs on both the HTPC and the RPi2 and every time, several of my TV shows get mixed together. For example, if I have TVShow1 and TVShow2, a season of TVShow2 will appear in the library under TVShow1. Also, not all of the shows will even show up in the library. If I go to the files view I see all of my shows but if I check the info for the ones missing from the library it will show as a different show (TVShow3 has info for TVShow4.)

Thinking that the data had been corrupted somehow when I copied it, I tried another fresh install of 8.2.3 but this time pointed it to my old server and got the same results – a mixed up library.

At that point I was concerned that my original data was bad so I decided to try LibreELEC v7.0.3 and it loads my library fine from both servers. There is no mixing up of any TV shows. I tried adding new media, deleting and re-adding, and refreshing the shows that seemed to be problematic under 8.2.3 and all shows stayed where they were supposed to with no mixing.

Focusing just on the HTPC since it’s much faster than the RPi2, I worked my way up through the Alpha releases after 7.0.3 and found that the last version that worked for me was LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-7.90.007 Kodi 17.0-BETA3. There were no issues with this version at all. I did the same add, delete/re-add, refresh and everything was good. The problem appears for me in the next alpha, LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-7.90.008 Kodi 17.0-BETA5. I then tried LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-9.0-Milhouse-20180210010018-#0209w-g7f93f94 and the problem exists for me in this version.

I have attached a debug log from a fresh install of 8.2.3. I rebooted after enabling debug logging then added an NFS share and allowed it to refresh the library. After the refresh 9 of the 13 shows in the share were in the library. The other 4 were mixed into the 9 that were added.

If everything didn’t work fine with 7.90.007 and previous I would say I had a problem somewhere on my side. I suppose I still could but I have no clue what it could be.

Could anyone help me figure this out? I’d be very grateful! I’ve spent the last 4 days trying different things and I’m not sure what else I can do.

Thank you.

kodi.log

derekvm · February 13, 2018 at 12:28 AM

Does anyone have any ideas at all?

I've gone ahead and setup the HTPC and RPi using 7.0.3 for now without any problems. All the media is in the correct location in the library with nothing mixed up. Before I did that I tried 8.2.3 one last time on both with the same results - multiple TV Shows mixed together in the library.

Should I maybe try posting in the Kodi forums? I actually don't think it's a LibreELEC issue per se because after my original post I tried OpenELEC 8.0.4 and Kodi 17.6 in Windows 10 and they both had the same problem for me. It looks like my issue is with Kodi 17 but I have no clue what is causing it.

**chewitt** · February 13, 2018 at 4:20 AM Official Post

It won't be an LE specific issue, but you need to make tests with Kodi Leia not Jarvis/Krypton. Even if you can prove a fault in older releases those codebases are dead (no more maintenance releases) and the fix will go into Leia.

derekvm · February 13, 2018 at 5:21 AM

Thanks for replying!

I did try LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-9.0-Milhouse-20180210010018-#0209w-g7f93f94 and had the same issue but I will try a version of Leia under Windows and see what my results are.

Thanks again.

derekvm · February 13, 2018 at 6:58 AM

I just tried KodiSetup-20180212-cd02e6c4-master-x64 and got the same result.

I added a folder with 14 different TV Shows as a video source and 10 of them were successfully added to the library with the other 4 mixed into the 10 that were added. It seems to be the same shows that get mixed up every time in my testing. However, they are always successfully added in older versions.

Any idea if anything changed with the way shows are added to the library after LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-7.90.007/Kodi 17.0-BETA3 that could be exposing a problem with my data or something else on my side?

**chewitt** · February 13, 2018 at 9:19 AM Official Post

Now make a log and identify the specific shows that are incorrectly mixed among the correctly scraped shows; else nobody can be bothered to look through the logfile to guess which one might have something different.

NB: Also conduct an experiment where you rename everything to exactly match thetvdb.com naming and remove all the scene flagging crap. Most of the scraping issues we see are due to lazy users not naming files correctly.

derekvm · February 13, 2018 at 2:39 PM

Understood. I will do some renaming and repost a cleaned up log file.

Thanks for your help!

bubblegum57 · February 13, 2018 at 7:38 PM

Perhaps this will help, or perhaps not

Whenever I had duplicate library entries for my movies, I deleted/cleaned the library. I did this, by changing the content from movies to none, then let it clean the library.

Another way,is to go into user data? & delete the db files (not sure of the path)

Then change the source back to movies re scrape the sources.

(or tv shows)

derekvm · February 14, 2018 at 4:59 AM

Quote from bubblegum57

Perhaps this will help, or perhaps not

Whenever I had duplicate library entries for my movies, I deleted/cleaned the library. I did this, by changing the content from movies to none, then let it clean the library.

Another way,is to go into user data? & delete the db files (not sure of the path)

Then change the source back to movies re scrape the sources.

(or tv shows)

Thank you very much for the idea. I did go ahead and give that a try but I still had the same issue. I do appreciate your suggestion though!

derekvm · February 15, 2018 at 6:45 PM

So the more I worked on trying to get a reasonable log file with just a couple of examples of my problem, the more I realized that it is my data that is causing the problem.

All of the TV show mixing involves at least one show that does not exist on thetvdb.com and I have manually created .nfo files for using MediaElch. I've done that for years with no problems but I can see that over time I have made changes to certain manually created shows and not properly updated everything. For example, I may have manually changed the name of a show from OriginalName to SomethingElse but neglected to update each episode so they are all still associated with OriginalName. Some of the episode .nfo files don't seem to even have any information about what TV show they are associated with. It's a bit of a dog's breakfast. My library has gotten a bit out of control I guess.

I'm still not sure why everything seems okay with older versions of Kodi, or why everything loads okay in MediaElch with no mix ups but I decided to fire up Media Companion a couple of days ago and when it loaded all my media the same mix ups that were happening in my Kodi library happened there. I also tried pointing it at my old server and got the same mix ups again so I was at least happy to 100% rule out any problems with my new unRAID server or Kodi itself. I'll just have to take some time and do proper library maintenance to get things straightened out.

Thanks for the responses and help pointing me in the right direction.

**chewitt** · February 15, 2018 at 11:30 PM Official Post

As a general rule the scrapers in Kodi improve over time so if things work in older releases and fail in newer ones it's usually because some bug has been fixed that doesn't allow you to get away with previous shoddy working practices

Please consider creating an account on thetvdb.com and add missing info/shows instead of creating local nfo files. Then in the future any time you need to re-scrape the info it exists. As is often the case, a little preparation time invested up-front saves effort at some future point.

derekvm · February 15, 2018 at 11:47 PM

I actually do have an account at thetvdb.com and try to contribute additions and fixes when I can. Unfortunately, in this case I don't believe the content would be allowed. It was all mostly sports events, highlights, or one off specials that I have just created my own different "TV series" for.