Manual subfolder scanning

Problem: the realtime scanning is very much hit-or-miss. I don’t expect that this is a Roon issue so much as an smb/linux/mac/synology issue. I finally subscribed to Roon a few days ago, and I was impressed that it scanned all 165k~ tracks that I have with almost nothing being skipped. I have since tried adding 40 or 50 albums, 2 or 3 at a time, and so far I only saw one album get added in real time. I let it sit for a few hours to see if it will eventually add them to Roon, but it doesn’t.

Proposed solution: It would be great if we could tell Roon to manually scan particular folders. I imagine most people have their library set up as Artist > Album > Tracks. When I add a new album, I would like to be able to just scan that artist’s folder. Force rescanning my entire library all the time feels like a very tedious and intensive process, and it takes forever. This seems like it could be a relatively easy way to avoid it.

Current setup for reference:
Roon Core = 2014 Mac Mini i5, 4GB
Library = Synology DS918+ (SMB)

I’m not sure if this would work but you might try adding a different folder so you have two top level folders and add new stuff to the second folder so you just trigger scans of that.
I “think” if you then copy the contents of “new” once it has been scanned into the main folder it shouldn’t load up the scan.
Maybe worth a try once to see if it works.

Once I move it to to the main folder though, I’d have to rescan. Your idea would give me quicker access to newly added content, but it would just be delaying the inevitable, and it would make my library messy.

Could your describe your setup? Your tunes are on the NAS, where is your Core and if not on NAS, are you connecting via NFS or SMB?

165k tracks plus artwork etc. is a lot of filesystem content for the NAS to keep track of - do you have sufficient inotify handles configured on the NAS? On my Arch box I have it set to

fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288

in /etc/sysctl.conf

If it’s set to a low number the filesystem will not detect and report changes/additions, which directly impacts Roon’s ability to detect changes.

You’re right about that.

This should actually work, so I don’t know what goes wrong here.

But to make it short: If you need/want working real-time detection, don’t use a NAS to hold your music library for Roon. Use local (to your Roon Core) storage instead (internal and/or external via USB).
You can keep your NAS to hold a backup of your music library.

Update: Another opinion.

Do you have settings > storage > your_folder_name > 3 dots edit > Automatic rescan interval set to something reasonable?

I agree - I have recently moved from NAS to local storage and can confirm the delay goes away.

However, I always found that manually triggering a rescan using the ‘Force Rescan’ function would then show the additions after a short delay. Is this a sufficient workaround?

If it were me I’d try connecting to the NAS using NFS and seeing if that changes the situation. I suspect it will unless the NAs is out of inotify handles.

For maximum performance though, nothing beats your tunes residing on local storage.

I was in the believe that one can’t set it while real-time watching is active, which depends on the availability of SMB v3.

Thanks for the info! I did actually mention my setup in my original post. I’m running Core on a 2014 Mac Mini i5, and it’s connected via SMB to the library which is hosted on my Synology DS918+. I will definitely be taking a look into inotify, as it is something I am completely unfamiliar with.

Try using NFS rather than SMB to mount the NAS shares as well.

Honestly, if it were up to me, I’d completely turn off all scanning and detection, and I’d be able to just manually tell Roon “hey, I put this album here”. I’m sure there’s a lot of debate about how much effort hard drives exert in order to scan your whole music library all the time, but I’d like to keep that minimized.

I have this set to only do it on startup, as I can tell it to rescan when I want. I prefer to have control over it. Per my statement above, I don’t even want to use the automatic scanner at all, but I have no choice.

Based on what I’m seeing on my Mac Mini, it looks like it’s connected via smb2 to my synology. not sure how to change that to smb3 though.

I’m not sure how to change it to NFS from SMB. Any suggestions? Additionally, will it make me have to rescan the whole library?

I referenced a Microsoft guidance page that covers what to do from Windows. On the NAS side you just need to configure the root folders of your collection as NFS shares, same way you’ve set them up as SMB shares - probably just ticked a setting in the web interface.

On the downside paths will look different and it’ll likely mean a rescan and reanalysis of the library.

You have to enable SMB v3 support on your NAS. A restart of the NAS and the Roon Core might be needed for the changes to become effective. But as already pointed out, this will enable real-time watching which will most likely fail to work properly in your current setup anyway.

I don’t know, but I connect using smb v2 and this is what I see

Because real-time watching isn’t available with SMB v2.x.

The confusion in this thread started because the OP complained about the non working real-time scanning in his first post and only later on revealing that his current setup doesn’t support real-time watching/scanning at all (and he additionally disabled the automatic rescan on purpose).

Hi @Steve_Hersch,

I assume you know that there is a manual force rescan option per watched folder …

As a bench mark my system (Windows 10, i7 Core and QNAP i3 NAS) with circa 250,000 tracks takes 50 seconds to complete the rescan.

PS real-time notifications work fine with setup.

you nailed it. I suppose if real-time does work as I need it to, then the current setup for scanning automatically will suffice. Will get this bumped up to SMB3 now, and will see how it goes. Thanks a lot!

The force rescan takes a significant amount of time on my setup. Perhaps it’s due to not using SMB3. I will find out shortly.

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update!

So my library on my Synology is now mounted on my Roon Core (Mac Mini i5) via SMB3, and I can’t see any difference. It takes about 45 minutes for a rescan, and an album I had just added (after rescan was complete) did not show up in real time, and it has been about 30 minutes now :’(

Is there a chance that NFS will do a better job? I could also dig up a Windows machine to use as the core, or I could install it on my Synology if anyone thinks that would be an improvement? I’m not a mac guy, so I’m happy to blame the mini if someone gives me the green light!

final update!

In my mind, a mapped drive is a mapped drive, but that is apparently not the case. After digging in to the forums here a little further, I found out that drive mapping your library on a Mac is a little different. Instead of just adding “\NASIP\music” in Roon, I mounted that directory at the OS level, and then added it in Roon, which saw it as a local volume. I’m still not scanning 165,000 tracks in 50 seconds, but it’s scanning at least 3 times faster than it was before, and now the real time scanning is working! I still think that a method of re-scanning particular artist forwards does have a use, but it has definitely slid down my priority list.

Thanks a lot for all of the help everyone!

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