Build 269 causes a problem with my NAS

After upgrading to Roon Server Linux 1.3 build 269, I noticed unusual disk activity on my NAS - a Synology 110j with DSM 5.2-5967 Update 4 where music library is resident. Somehow, samba share was very active.
Running a test on my Linux system where Roon Server is resident, I noticed that Roon Appliance process gets very active (up to 19 cpu activity) every minute or so for about 30 seconds,
My NAS gets so overloaded that Roon Client cannot open the library.
If, on the other hand, I stop roon server service, disk activity on my nas goes back to zero.
At the moment, Roon cannot be used. I cannot even troubleshoot because I cannot open it.

I remember that Roon has a feature like volume leveling each single track…some form of DSP which I had disabled. Maybe Roon Server is trying to do something of the kind, similar to indexing… However, I cannot stop it because, as I said, I cannot open library.

Any help?

Flagging @support.

Gianluca, the support folks are probably going to want the info described in this link.

My ArchLinux system is on a Intel Core i7 4790 Quad Core 3.6GHz, running Roon Core.

Thanks for the feedback @bibo01 and sorry to hear of the troubles.

Moving forward, I have went ahead and enabled diagnostics on your account so we can get some logs and information on what could be going on with your NAS. However, being as you are unable to use Roon (“At the moment, Roon cannot be used. I cannot even troubleshoot because I cannot open it”) I am worried that the the information may not make it to our servers. Would it be possible for you to follow the instructions found here and upload us a set of RoonServer logs taken from the NAS?

-Eric

I sent you a link with the logs in PM.
However, the RoonServer logs are not from the NAS. RoonServer resides on my Linux system; NAS holds music library.
Let me know if I can be of further help.

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I have a similar setup with Roon core on a Ubuntu server, music files on a Synology NAS and been recently experiencing a new & strange behavior. Further I use HQ Player on Linux server and mRendu.

Everything works ok except when I try to play music after a day or so layoff (everything stays powered on). When I select music in Roon remote, HQ Player interface flickers and I can see another program (file) flashes in the Linux tab area like it is turning on & off. Sorry but hard to explain exactly. Restart HQ Player and everything works.

One other to report is that the IP address on my NAS some how got reset to a new address which caused problems with Roon accessing library. Manually set the IP address and got everything working again.

No idea if the strange behavior is related to Roon or one of the other pieces of software or hardware but found this thread and thought I would report it.

Hi @Eric_Underwood,

Thanks for checking in.
Please check on your Synology NAS with Resource Monitor if you have unusual system behavior like in the following picture:

Then please try to stop Roon Core service and check if NAS performance changes, like disk/volume activity.

PS: my Synology NAS is low powered and may get cpu overloaded more easily than yours.

Hi @bibo01 ----- Thank you for the logs and the clarification! Confirming that the materials have been received and are in our queue for analysis.

Once I have some feedback from our techs I will be sure to provide an update in a timely manor. Your patience is greatly appreciated!

-Eric

Here is a shot of my NAS resource monitor with Roon Core running on my Ubuntu server.

Your NAS is fine.

Hi @bibo01 ----- Just touching base with you to see how things have been going. Any new progress or observations?

I can see that your ticket is still with our tech team and expect an update soon. Again, thank you for your patience!

-Eric

No change. Every time I activate Roon Server it overloads my NAS. So I was just waiting for, hopefully, some good news from you/Support.
Thanks

Hi @Eric - any update? I am still unable to use Roon. It’s almost a month now :unamused:

Hi @bibo01 ----- Thank you for your patience and my sincere apologies for the wait here.

Moving forward, our QA team has been actively trying to understand why you have experienced this behavior with your NAS. Our attempts to try and reproduce this in house have not yielded any noteworthy results and in light of this I have setup a meeting with on our senior developer for later in the week to get some feedback on this issue. e

In preparing my report for our meeting I would like to ask you for the following information:

  • When you noticed this issue where you were unable to access your library on the NAS do you recall if Roon was doing any library analysis at the time?

  • Is there (or was there) any Roon software running on the NAS itself (i.e RoonServer)?

  • I want to enable diagnostics on your system so I can attach the information to my report. Can you please verify the IP address of your core machine so we know were to enable diagnostics? You can PM this information if you’d like.

-Eric

Sent PM. Let me know if it’s OK.

Just on the off-chance that it could help… When Roon 1.3 arrived, my Ubuntu Linux NUC with Roon Core would lose my music on a Synology NAS. It turned out that the problem was a Linux kernel bug with having the same SMB share mounted as both ‘nounix’ (which Roon needs), and ‘unix’ (which I had for other reasons). Details here.

I think you are on to something here - THANKS.
However, I do not understand about the three possible workarounds suggested by @danny
1) stop mounting twice and let Roon do your mount exclusively. Nothing changes in Roon, the only change is outside of Roon. — How?
2) Stop mounting twice and you do the mount completely yourself. Change the location of the storage folder inside Roon to be whenever your mounted it. Just ignore that the “add network share” exists inside Roon. — Where is this “add network share” option?
3) Mount the share with the ‘nounix’ option outside of Roon. Nothing changes in Roon, the only change is outside of Roon. — Do I have to use ‘nounix’ option inside my Linux system as I mount my NAS?
Thanks for your patience.
@Eric

In my case, the Synology SMB share with my music had an existing Linux mount on the NUC with my Core that I had set up for backup etc. That mount was set up as a default (‘unix’) mount. When Roon Core starts on Linux, it creates a new mount with the ‘nounix’ flag. That’s the cause of the problem, having two mounts of the same SMB share with different flags. What I did to fix the problem was option 1): I removed the boot-time mount of the SMB share as a ‘unix’ file system, which I didn’t really need any longer. Before Roon Core starts on my NUC, there is no mount with the SMB share; when Core starts, it creates it own ‘nounix’ mount, and all is well.

Option 2) is to specify a local file path for music storage, eg. /mnt/mymusic/ where ‘/mnt/mymusic’ is the Linux mount point for the SMB share, instead of a remote SMB share.

I didn’t consider option 3), because ‘nounix’ mounts do not support the full range of Linux file paths, and that can mess up some Linux apps.

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As an aside, the nounix flag was added to the Roon mount options last year on Linux as there were some issues with POSIX-compliant file names. Roon could see the file in the directory listing, but couldn’t open the file due to special characters in the name. This popped up specifically on linux mounting from Synology and the best solution was to disable POSIX-compliant file names through the use of the ‘nounix’ mount flag. This also brought the linux -> Synology SMB file names into parity with what would be seen on an OSX or Windows host.

If you decide to go the route of mounting outside of Roon without the nounix flag then you will want to check the skipped files listing in roon (under Settings -> Library) to make sure that nothing was missed. If you see some files skipped showing an I/O error then you may want to consider renaming those files without any special characters.

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This is what I tried -
Although my music library is on a NAS, in Roon I am pointing locally as /media/samba/Music/
I added “nounix” to my local samba mount.
The result was not positive: my NAS still goes berserk when Roon Core is started!

Please, @support @Eric, if you have any suggestion or different attempt to trry, let me know. I haven’t been able to use Roon for the last 40 days!