Roon does not load, "There was an issue loading your database"

Roon Core Machine

NUC with Roon Optimized Core Kit
Intel NUC DC3217IYE, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

Roon Core OS: Version 1.0 (build 227) stable
Roon Version: Version 1.8 (build 806) stable

Networking Gear & Setup Details

several Unifi US-8-60W managed switches
several Unifi UAP-AC-Pro access points

Clients affected: all, both those wired to 1Gb Ethernet and those to Wifi

Connected Audio Devices

NAD C658

Library Size

Since the database is unaccessible I have to guess: around 20000 tracks

Description of Issue

All Roon clients (iPad over Wifi, Windows 10 Client over GbE) show a sad PC Icon with
There was an issue loading your database
Don’t worry. Roon staff is ready to help…

This happend from one second to the next while listening.
Proper rebooting Roon or the entire Roon Optimized Core Kit machine (over the web interface) did not help either

(This setup has been running perfectly fine for the past 20 months. I did not make mass changes to the library in the past months)

I guess I should “Reset” the database over Web interface of the Roon Optimized Core Kit, and then it should by possible to restore from the last backup?

Can someone please confirm or advise?

Hello @Alexander_Holy,

Thanks so much for letting us know of the error message you’re seeing…:sweat:

This error message points to database corruption. This type of error is extremely rare for us as our database infrastructure is designed specifically to prevent this type of corruption, and we don’t take this class of issue lightly.

We’ve traced a few reports like this in the past to hard drive integrity issues but generally speaking, this means that Roon is reading information from your hard drive that is different from what was originally written, and the database is now unable to load properly.

What’s Next?

If you’ve been making regular backups, my advice would be to install Roon fresh on your Core machine, and roll back to one of your backups. You can use these instructions to do so:

  • Stop RoonServer from running in ROCK’s WebUI
  • Navigate to your ROCK’s Database Location
  • Find the folder that says “RoonServer”
  • Rename the “RoonServer” folder to “RoonServer_old”
  • Restart the RoonServer in the WebUI to generate a new Roon database folder
  • On the Roon Remotes, press “Use another Core” and connect to the new database
  • (Optional) - Restore your database from a Backup prior to the issue starting

If the database loads properly, your edits, playlists, tags, etc should be intact, and we can confirm everything is performing properly once it’s been restored. If you do not have any backups, unfortunately you will need to start with a fresh database.

Thanks for trying :pray:

Thank you Rebeka!

Using the procedure you mentioned I was able to restore last nights backup and everything is back to normal. Thank you!

However this leaves a few extra questions:
Hardware can always fail, but normally on a Windows or Linux machine a faulty disk write never goes unnoticed. On ROCK (and the same is probably true for Nucleus), how and where do I see disk errors logged?

Have you ever considered extending binary backups with clean exports in a well defined and documented format (eg JSON file/files with documented schema)? So you could do a cleanroom import in case your database is corrupt? Like probaby many users I have a collection of about 2000 ripped CDs but I have stopped purchasing new CDs, listening to high bitrate streaming audio instead. An index of ripped CDs can always be rebuilt, but you will never be able to add all those albums and tracks on Quobuz/Tidal. And a cleanroom imprt/export would probably open ways to migrate between Tidal and Quobuz.

A post was split to a new topic: Is there an issue with ROON on macOS running its database off a NAS?