Roon is not watching for new files in real time

[ar9]

Roon Core running on Ubuntu. My files are on a separate NAS.
I recently transitioned my Core from Windows to Linux and that is when this issue arose.

I have set my Storage Folder to monitor my NAS (via \IP Address\Share Name).

If I force rescan, it finds my music just fine, but it is not finding my new music in real time, like it says it is doing. Any troubleshooting suggestions here?

[mjw]

This is likely a SAMBA limitation. SMB/ CIFS is a Microsoft technology and consequently Windows does a better job of picking up changes on shares. Maybe setup an NFS share?

[BlackJack]

Make your NAS reporting a maximum supported SMB version < 3.0.

[ar9]

I can set my XigmaNAS to protocol SMB2. Do you believe that may resolve this issue?

[BlackJack]

Real-time watching for file changes is a feature of SMB ≥ v3.0 (on Windows). See also:

New Files from QNAP NAS don't show up on Windows Core

Same situation for me. I have the same NAS (mine might be a TS-431+, if that matters?) and the same problem. For reasons I can’t explain, for my first 4ish months with Roon, automatically adding files worked very well. I ripped a new CD, my library was “Watching for new files in real time”, and the files automatically added. For reasons I can’t explain, it no longer works… at all? I’ve waited hours and even over night once. As of a couple months ago, the only way to get new files into my …

For short: It will disable the (non-working) real-time watching.

[ar9]

So, you meant run SMB greater than 3, not less than (as in your OP)?

[ar9]

I have it set so that the minimum protocol is SMB3 - this does not resolve the issue.

I’ve never set an NFS share up, but it looks challenging to me. Is this the only option? SMB / Linux / Real-time watching is broken?

[Robert_Daines]

Unfortunately this is “normal” behavior: Linux does not always report changes. This has been commented upon by Roon in a number of threads. I think I’ve had my library update once on its own. When you make changes to your library, just Force Re-Scan in Roon under the Storage settings.

[mjw]

XigmaNAS already has an NFS server; you’ll need to enable this through the webGUI. I assume this will create the share and configure the export.

On your Ubuntu machine you’ll need the NFS client. Something like this …

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nfs-common

You’ll then need to create a mount point and mount on the client.

sudo mkdir /nfs/music
sudo mount nas_ip:/nas_folder_path /nfs/music

You can check that the folder is mounted using df -h. Once it’s working add the mount point to your fstab, e.g.:

192.168.1.10:/mnt/music /nfs/music nfs auto,nofail,noatime,nolock,intr,tcp,actimeo=1800 0 0

[evand]

Library Auto Update

I suspect you’re out of inotify handles. What does cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches return? If it’s 8192 and you have more files (any type) and folders than that then that’d explain the behavior. See here:

[BlackJack]

No, I meant what I wrote. If real-time watching isn’t working, then don’t allow SMB v3 on your file server.

[noris]

Hi @ar9,

Has there been any change since setting the SMB to SMBv2 on your server? Linux-based Roon Servers are a bit more unreliable when reported file changes, please see the following link threads for further information:

New file detection on NAS share

Hello All, As mentioned by other users, Linux based Roon servers are a bit more unreliable at reporting events that occur due to watched folders than Windows based directories. You can read more regarding this behavior in the following threads: Hope this clears things up a bit but do let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks, Noris

[ar9]

Hi Noris.

I just finished implementing what @mjw suggested, using nfs. Took me a while to get it all sorted, but my folder is mounted.

Any way, unfortunately, my Ubuntu box still is not scanning files in real-time. Such a shame because this took me about 2 hours to learn and setup properly.

It’s a big hindrance for me, since I prefer to quickly edit my album’s details, as opposed to manually rescanning by accessing the menu.

Had I known this feature was not working, I absolutely would not have migrated my box to Linux.

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

It’s works great on my sonicTransporter i5 which is Linux based. Any changes I make to the music files on the Roon Core using my iMac are immediately picked up by the Roon Core b

[ar9]

Are your music files on the same Linux box that your Core is running on? Keep in mind I’m running Core on an Ubuntu machine and my media files are on a separate NAS.

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

Yes, my music files are on the same box as my Roon Core. Why do you have them on a NAS?

[ar9]

My NAS is a dedicated file-server running XigmaNAS (built on FreeBSD). It’s over 100TB and serves many clients so no real room to run Roon and Plex.

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

So why not add a drive to your Roon Core for your music files. Then backup the music files to the NAS. This will reduce network traffic, improve access speed to the music files for the Roon Core, and solve your update problem…

[ar9]

Because my mini-ITX Ubuntu box running Roon and Plex can hold 1 hard drive and I would need about 6 to hold my music.

[noris]

Hi @ar9,

As I noted in my linked thread above, this has been a limitation that we are well aware of and have done what is possible to mitigate it as mentioned by our CTO and Product Manager in the following threads:

Roon saves its scanning until I want to use the stereo

This made it all make sense to me. I know what’s happening. Roon knows that it can’t trust NAS’s to report on filesystem events in all cases–and there’s no way for us to detect whether events are coming or not. NAS’s just silently report a subset of events, or none at all. So “real time watching” isn’t real time all the time. We did some research and found that just about every piece of software that attempts to do “real time watching” on NAS’s eventually runs into this limitation, and supple…

Is adding to Library from Watched Folders Automatic?

Hey @Semaxx @Gabriel @Patatorz – as a general rule, Windows picks up changes more reliably than Linux or Mac, but all of this really comes down to the NAS consistently reporting changes back to the machine running the Core. For the most part, we’ve found that most NAS drives do not do this reliably, particularly when the changes don’t involve creating or modifying folders. We’ve recently added the option to customize how often Roon manually rescans your NAS for changes, which is a workaround, o…

Real Time File Watching - Windows vs ROCK

This is a symptom of how real-time file watching works on Windows, vs on Linux or OSX. Remember that SMB is a Microsoft technology–it’s a first class part of the Windows ecosystem in a way that it isn’t on Linux and OS X. One result is that Windows tends to be a bit better at picking up changes on SMB shares in real time. We’ve made some improvements to Roon’s filesystem watching behavior over the years, many of which were released with Roon 1.3 a couple of months ago, but ultimately when the …

I wish I had better news for you here but at the end of the day Roon relies on the NAS share to report file changes reliably and if the NAS is not performing this function as expected, Roon won’t be able to automatically see the new content.