Error message in Settings > Storage: This directory appears to be empty

[Joel_Weeks]

Main library has problems. Finds some but not all music. Scan stops after less than a minute.

LaCie Thunderbolt drive. Mac OS Ventura, 24GB of RAM. Mac mini M2. 13.2 Roon Core 2.0.

Problem happens on two different hard drives, other applications can access those files. Deleted Roon and database files and reinstalled, but problem persists

Somebody had this message in May last year but issue was closed without a description.

Number of Tracks in Library

30,000 tracks

[Joel_Weeks]

I’ve tested this problem on two Winchester disks and two SSDs. It persists. Seems like a pretty serious bug.

[Joel_Weeks]

Looked over some posts searching for “APFS USB”. I’m not using a password-protected drive, nor VPN.

I had a spare SandDisk SSD formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This worked.

Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Hard Drive formatted as APFS, and two other drives formatted as APFS, fail.

[benjamin]

Hey @Joel_Weeks,

Ben here with the support, thank you for your continued patience while we work through this thread. I wanted to check in to see if you had set up the correct permissions on the trouble device. You can learn more about that here:
https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/faq-how-do-i-create-a-shared-folder-on-mac-and-add-it-as-a-watched-folder-in-roon

If your problem persists, please take note of the specific date and time after reproducing the issue, and share that information here. I’ll be on standby for your reply.

[Joel_Weeks]

Thanks for the help. The problem continues, I can’t use the Samsung 970 EVO that I bought expressly to store data for Roon. Nor can I use a LaCie drive, where previously I stored my library on Ubuntu for last couple of years.

I chmod 777 everything early on. Folders and all subs set to “drwxrwxrwx+” so permissions issue seem unlikely.

Plex and Swinsian can index and play music on all drives. And every other Mac app I use can access data on these drives.

The external drives are not shared, but the server is running on same Mac. The SanDisk drive that is also working is not shared, it is connected by USB. Mounted as /Volumes/MusicSSD and shown in Disk Utility as MusicSSD in picture.

Do I really need to use an SMB share vs a file system path to access external drives that are directly connected using USB to the same Mac? That doesn’t make sense to me, nor is it required for SanDisk.

Nor was that required on my Ubuntu server, You just navigate to folder and tell it to “use this”.

[Joel_Weeks]

Here’s Swinsian running from same drive that Roon fails on.

[benjamin]

Hey @Joel_Weeks,

Thanks for your patience while our team took a closer look into your account. We’re seeing a few different errors popping up, one of which seems to be recurring in regard to this subfolder:

/Volumes/RoonSSD/music/plex

Could you temporarily move this subfolder to another location, and let me know if you continue to run into issues? With that, it would be good to refresh your Roon database as well. Steps to follow below:

• Create a Backup of your current database
• Exit out of Roon
• Navigate to your Roon Database Location
• Find the folder that says “Roon”
• Rename the “Roon” folder to “Roon_old”
• Reinstall the Roon App from our Downloads Page to generate a new Roon folder
• Verify if the issue persists on a fresh database before restoring the backup

[Joel_Weeks]

I removed a non-resolving symbolic link called “plex” and the scan finished.

Seems like better default behavior would be to skip subdirectories with fatal errors rather than stoping the entire scan. Also, the error message specific to actual problem directory should be exposed to user.

In any case, thanks, things seem to be working again.