Shows getting chopped off

I seem to be having a problem that started at about the same time I switched to NZBdrone. Could be a coincidence.

My NZBdrone tells Sabnzd to grab these the shows, which are then moved to hard drives connected to my Popcorn Hour A300. I watch them via Plex on my media server and the Plex app on the PCH.

Lately, the majority of shows are a little broken. I can’t seek, fast forward, rewind the videos properly. And the annoying part is they often suddenly stop playing at random points, and you can’t go past that point where the video stops playing.

Any idea what might be causing this problem?

Which OS are you running on?

If its not Windows there is an issue with SMB shares and mono, its not something that we can fix though, the work around are to use NFS shares instead or local disks.

Well, the drives are NTFS, attached to the Popcorn Hour. The Ubuntu server that runs your app is Ubuntu, but the files are downloaded to an NTFS partition, and are then moved to the NTFS “local” drives attached to the Popcorn Hour. I didn’t have this issue with Sickbeard, though again, I’m not squarely pointing the finger at Sonarr

How are they mounted in Ubuntu? SMB?

This is pretty much the exact scenario I described. You didn’t have an issue with SB because it doesn’t use mono.

Hi
Looks like recent weeks of maxing out both drives repeatedly led to problems, including errors on both the NTFS and ext4 drive. Using chkdsk on the former and GParted’s fsck on the latter found and fixed errors, and this seems to have solved the issue. Thank you for helping me think my way through that.

Thanks for this, I was having the same issue with truncated files. Hopefully mono fixes this so I can use Sonarr in the future

Hi

Ohhh, sorry, I didn’t return to this thread. So I have to connect with NFS instead of SMB.

Is this any kind priority for mono peeps to fix?

This could send me back to Sickbeard. I hear NFS is insecure and often troublesome to configure.

Its not a priority for them because we haven’t been able to prove where the issue lies exactly. We have added some additional checking to attempt to catch this issue and work around it, its not yet in develop though.

I don’t see how NFS would be any less secure, I’d be curious to know where you heard/read that. Configuration wise its a bit more involved.

Well I’ll take a stab at it. Maybe this weekend, though I’m building a new HTPC. I can point to a lot of comments on ubuntu forums and how-to’s later.

If anyone has an Ubuntu/Linux guide they think is best, please say so.

Markus, I am building a new HTPC media player this weekend. so my other options are: use local drives, i.e., start using this new machine as the media player and the fileserver, or presumably, if I make this new box Windows instead of Linux? Haven’t decided on on either of these yet, anyway.

Whats your current setup look like? What is Sonarr running on and where is the data stored?

I run Sonarr on Windows, with local disks (even if I ran linux it would be local disks) and have XBMC running on my HTPC’s which connect to my “server” over SMB to read the media files.

I don’t have a dedicated NAS device that holds my media, just an old desktop with multiple drives and some drive pooling software.

I made a diagram lol

Ahhh, makes sense, whats Sonarr/CP running on? With the new HTPC you could just connect those hard drives to that PC and stream from Plex running on the plex server, would just have to repoint the storage to the server, which you’ll likely need to do since you’re changing from PCH to an HTPC.

I’d keep the HTPC and “download server” separate, less noise and ability to change things without taking it all down at once.

Ubuntu 14.04

So you favor Option 1?

Pro’s are as you mentioned
Quieter (how exactly?)
Easier to make changes without taking everything down (good point!)
Download server is already set up!
Less likely the media player will get sluggish or freeze up during heavy activity

Con’s:
Less energy efficient
New HTPC has a lot of firepower to just sit there and play videos!

You said “With the new HTPC you could just connect those hard drives to that PC and stream from Plex running on the plex server” Are you saying hook the drives to the ubuntu machine? But then aren’t I missing out on the i5/Intel Graphics capabilities? Doesn’t the media player become almost useless at that point?
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Note that in either scenario, I haven’t decided: Windows or Ubuntu?

Option one is what I use (I have multiple HTPCs)

The CPU will only spin the fan up when its playing a show, not when ever its post processing files/downloading, so when its quiet in the room it will be quiet.

Not sure how many remote clients you have but an i5 could be taxed pretty heavily with Plex transcoding and par2 checks during high load times, plus having to play content on the screen.

I’m personally a big fan of a low powered devices at the TV, raspberry pi, chromecast, Google player, etc instead of a full blown desktop PC.

Ubuntu vs Windows really depends on what you want, both are capable running everything you need, though the Plex client might not be an officially sorted one from the Plex team.

I personally prefer Windows because its what I use every single day, it makes troubleshooting easier when things go wrong, which it always eventually does, but thats just me.

lol NFS is a total bear, especially since I don’t have much access to the popcorn hour’s config files. I can read-only to the TV directories via NFS mount, but I can’t read/write, and I can’t figure out how to change ownership/permissions. anyway, building a new htpc so no reason to beat this dying horse.