Migrating Sources from USB Drive to NAS

Help and Support Vero V
21

I wasn’t sure why you responded with this link because I’ve already indicated I was able to add all my music and video sources without much trouble. It’s the AIF I’m having trouble pointing OSMC/Kodi to.

However, it prompted me to go back to the Kodi Wiki page about the AIF, which I probably should have added as a bookmark by now: https://kodi.wiki/view/Artist_information_folder

From that page: The folder can be named in whatever way suits you and located with, or away from, your music files. We recommend away from your music files. Once a folder has been created on your file system, set it as the Artist Information Folder in either one of two ways:

Now, I had been trying the first method because that’s the only one I knew about, and, honestly, it’s more intuitive, at least to me, because I think of it more as an information source than a music source. Anyway, I tried the second method, and I was able to direct OSMC/Kodi to add it as a source. Note that I had already added all the video and music folders on my NAS using Settings>File Manager. I should also note that it now appears under Music>Files (where I added it) but not under Music>Sources, which kind of makes sense, considering it contains no actual music.

At this point, I was hoping I had solved my problem, but I soon found out I had not. When I went to Settings>Media>Music, I saw that the AIF location was still the one on my USB drive, and just as before, I couldn’t change it to the one on my NAS. I also couldn’t change the location in the Artist Slideshow add-on. So I’m basically back to where I was, having to use a USB drive for my AIF, while being able to use my NAS for all my music and video.

22

Now, in addition to not being able to point either Kodi or the Artist Slideshow add-on to the AIF on my NAS, I’ve also encountered a handful of albums that show the album artwork at the album level, but not at the song level. As far as I can tell, they all contain multiple mixes, e.g., The Harmony Codex with 5.1 and Atmos mixes. There are a few puzzling things about this:

  • Some albums that contain multiple mixes do not have this problem.
  • I use the same tagging process for all my albums (first MMH, then MB Picard).
  • When I pull the problem albums into MMH and MB Picard, it shows that all the songs have been tagged with the same album artwork.
  • I was able to fix one of the problem albums by doing an Information/Refresh, but that didn’t work on the others.
  • When I use a USB drive containing all these albums with the same tagging on my old Vero, the album artwork shows up as it should.

So the way I see it, there is either something wrong with my new Vero, or something wrong with using my NAS as a source instead of the USB drive. I have updated and cleaned my library multiple times, and I am doing a full rescan of all my sources. If that doesn’t fix my problems, I’ll remove my NAS sources and go back to using the USB drive. If that works, I’ll know my new Vero is okay.

23

How did you get on?

24

Mostly well, but when I first added the music sources from the USB drive to my Vero V, not all the artwork was showing up. Furthermore, I noticed these discrepancies in the numbers of albums after adding the same folders and files to my Vero 4K+ and my Vero V:

Vero 4K+

Source/Folder Number of Albums in Sources Number of Albums in Files
Atmos 35 42
Quad 208 228
Stereo 618 688
Surround 644 697
Upmix 112 109

Vero V

Source/Folder Number of Albums in Sources Number of Albums in Files
Atmos 9 42
Quad 206 228
Stereo 614 688
Surround 669 697
Upmix 111 109

I should mention that I use the “Artist - Album” folder style rather than the Artist/Album folder/subfolder style. Some of the discrepancies in the numbers of albums in Sources and in Files can be explained by boxsets and multi-disc sets. The more concerning discrepancies to me were between the numbers of albums in Sources between the two units, especially from my Atmos folder. I went back to each folder in Files, selected the context menu and Scan Item to Library, and got these more favorable numbers:

Vero V

Source/Folder Number of Albums in Sources Number of Albums in Files
Atmos 35 42
Quad 218 228
Stereo 621 688
Surround 669 697
Upmix 111 109

So all my Atmos albums were then showing up in Sources, and I gained some in Quad and Stereo as well. All the album artwork appeared to be showing up as well, although I didn’t check every album.

At this point, I considered just using the USB drive instead of the NAS, but then I realized that I had experienced similar, if not exactly the same, problems with each one. So I removed my USB drive sources and added and scanned the sources from my NAS. I got the same numbers of albums, and all the artwork seems to be there except for one album I’ve come across so far, Ten Years After’s A Space in Time with multiple mixes, including an Atmos one.

The album cover is in the album folder, and the songs are tagged with the art. If I access the album via Artists, Album, or Sources, the artwork doesn’t show. If I access the album via Files, it does. I’ve tried refreshing, choosing artwork, and rebooting, and it still doesn’t show.

I was never able to get the Vero to use the AIF on the NAS, so I have it located on a thumb drive attached to the Vero. Overall, I’m satisfied with the setup now.

25

You always can use kernel mounts to mount the NAS, then it will behave for Kodi identical to your USB drive

26

Assuming kernel mounts are achieved by using fstab or autofs, I tried the former using the instructions provided here: Configuring fstab based NFS share mounts

I first used the hint at the end to show the mount directories that my NAS offers:
osmc@osmc:~$ showmount -e 192.168.1.73
Export list for 192.168.1.73:
/Upmix Music (everyone)
/Surround Music (everyone)
/Stereo Music (everyone)
/Quad Music (everyone)
/Music Videos (everyone)
/Movies (everyone)
/Concerts (everyone)
/Atmos Music (everyone)
/Artist Information (everyone)

When I typed the command to edit my /etc/fstab file, it opened what appeared to be an editor, but there was no text to go to the end to add a line:

image
image877×582 4.02 KB

I thought that was strange, but I typed in a line similar to the example:
192.168.1.2:/nfs /mnt/TV\040Shows nfs noauto,x-systemd.automount 0 0
Except I substituted “/nfs /mnt/TV\040Shows” with “/Artist\40Information”. I did a Crtl + X, Y, Enter, and typed and entered sudo mount -a, but it came back with an error. So I went back into the editor, added “/nfs /mnt” saved the changes, and did sudo mount -a. This time it came back to the command prompt, so I reloaded systemd. However, when I tried to go to the share, it said No such file or directory:
osmc@osmc:~$ sudo nano /etc/fstab
osmc@osmc:~$ sudo mount -a
osmc@osmc:~$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
osmc@osmc:~$ sudo systemctl restart remote-fs.target
osmc@osmc:~$ cd /mnt/Artist\ Information
-bash: cd: /mnt/Artist Information: No such file or directory

So I was unable to do an fstab mount of the AIF on my NAS. I left out one or two mistakes I made which I figured out right away and which aren’t relevant to solving my problem. My logs are posted here: https://paste.osmc.tv/zopasosubu

27

I have decided to go back to using the USB drive for my sources. The only thing I gained from using the NAS was being able to update my sources without copying new files to the USB drive, and then there was the problem with the AIF. Plus, the last day to return the NAS is tomorrow, so . . . problem solved. :wink:

28

That is strange, anyhow as I read you moved on