Version: 3.0.6.1342
Mono Version: 5.20.1.34
OS: Debian 10
Logs: Only had Info level enabled, so no logs to provide. Have changed to Debug now. So, just a question at this stage. Maybe the answer is forthcoming without needing logs. Otherwise I can update after the next scheduled Refresh.
What would cause every individual episode NFO file to be updated? For a 10 year old show.
Is it just the obvious: because someone updated something on TVDB… for a 10 year old show.
And at what level would it trigger the update? Show. Season. Episode? Eg. If someone makes any sort of change at the show level, will that result in updating the NFO for every episode of the show? Even if nothing has changed for each episode.
Is there any way that I can check and tell? I had a look through TVDB and I can’t really see where to check at that level.
An example to use (although this happens for a lot of shows):
The Closer https://thetvdb.com/series/the-closer
NFO files have been updated 8 times this year already
Main show page shows Modified January 9, 2022. However, all 8 updates have been after this.
The last time the NFOs were updated was this afternoon, and it updated the NFO for every episode for all 7 seasons. This is the INFO level segment that relates. The timestamp for the modified NFO files matches up.
2022-02-14 13:54:34.1|Info|RefreshSeriesService|Skipping refresh of series: The Closer
2022-02-14 13:54:34.1|Info|DiskScanService|Scanning The Closer
2022-02-14 13:54:34.4|Info|DiskScanService|Completed scanning disk for The Closer
2022-02-14 13:54:35.0|Info|ExistingMetadataImporter|Found 1 existing metadata files
2022-02-14 13:54:35.2|Info|ExistingSubtitleImporter|Found 0 existing subtitle files
2022-02-14 13:54:35.5|Info|ExistingOtherExtraImporter|Found 0 existing other extra files
2022-02-14 13:54:35.5|Info|ExistingExtraFileService|Found 0 extra files
I found an old thread that seemed to be regarding something similar:
info logs are useless for any debugging; and for something this low level you’d want trace
glancing at the code - it looks like it may just re-write the meta file everytime and not much is logged at trace
your best bet would be to grab a copy of the nfo now and then compare it using winmerge or notepad++ compare plugin and see if there’s any difference if not - certainly seems like a suboptimal bug
OK thanks. I’ll look at enabling Trace level just prior to a scheduled Refresh so that I can capture a cycle.
Any thoughts as to what could be the trigger? Because it’s certainly not updating the NFO for every episode for every show. I’ve taken a quick glance through at random and some shows haven’t been updated in 6+ months. Yet other shows like this are getting hit multiple times a week.
I have been systematically making one change at a time. Starting with deleting some legacy metadata items from old XBMC/Kodi/etc. days that were pinging in the logs as Parser errors. In case they were somehow triggering a full metadata refresh. But there doesn’t seem to be any correlation there. The updates have continued to occur even after they were deleted.
I was also trying to see if Monitored vs Unmonitored status was a factor, but again it seems not.
Yes, that is on my list. I’ll grab some copies and do a compare to see if anything is flagged.
I also plan to try deleting the NFOs completely and let them recreate anew and see if they will stop updating after that.
OK, so I managed to grab a set of Trace logs for a Refresh cycle, but I won’t have time to look over them until the weekend to see if I can understand what is happening. If I can even make sense of them that is.
However, I have been able to further determine/confirm the following:
I did a compare. The before and after NFO match identically, even down to the hash. So despite there being no change in content, something is still causing them to be updated during a Refresh.
Deleting them made no difference. They were recreated during the next Refresh (as expected), but since then they have also been ‘updated’ in subsequent Refreshes.
I think the next thing I’ll try is removing and re-importing the series
So, I think I was able to determine the What (was causing the repeated updates), but I don’t know the Why. But if anyone else is experiencing the same, hopefully this can help you out.
Duplicate episodes.
Any show where I somehow had a duplicate episode (or something that Sonarr considered to be a duplicate episode due to poor naming etc.) seemed to be the correlation. Since I went through and corrected the issue for these episodes, there are now no seemingly uncalled for NFO updates. I’m not sure if there is a native way within Sonarr to identify these duplicates. I used the Duplicates filter in Plex.
There have been two Refresh cycles in Sonarr now since I corrected the duplicates and there have been no NFO updates that didn’t have some other explanation. I’ll give it a while longer just to be certain, and then mark this as Solved.