How does TuneFusion know what files in a previously sync'd folder need a rewrite

[vilsen]

IMO, if unsure, it is smarter to confirm rather than assume, as demonstrated perfectly here by schmidj.

Yes, I like the confirm approach too. Since schmidj asked for a clarification and also did a feature request for a different wording than the well used "preserve" expression, there was room for some background. IMHO "preserve" works ok and it would only confuse things to change it.

But this is merely a side note to the real issue here, which could be a bug that schmidj is on to.

[mville]

schmidj, it looks like the sync internal database is screwed. When I experienced issues in the past, I simply removed the sync and started again. Now, I'm running R1.7 and currently have 3 syncs which, touch wood, are behaving themselves.

I haven't tested all the various options in TuneFUSION, but I suspect there are still issues lurking within, as seems to be the case here.

[schmidj]

It appears that somehow in my experimenting that the permissions for the files in the folder that has the issue got changed such that windows explorer can see them (and move them around on the (Linux)server but TuneFusion can't see them. I can see that in looking at the file properties in windows explorer now. I need to sort out whether that is an issue on the server (possibly with Samba) or a Windows issue. So, I need to straighten that out and will then try my experiment with changing tags using mp3tag and then resyncing using TuneFusion again. This may not be a TuneFusion issue??? (In fact I'm a little suspicious that mp3tag may have locked the files (the whole folder including the files where I modified the tags) (by changing the permissions) when I was editing or looking at them and never "unlocked" them on the Windows side. I'll report back after further investigation.

Thanks

John

[GBrown]

(In fact I'm a little suspicious that mp3tag may have locked the files (the whole folder including the files where I modified the tags) (by changing the permissions) when I was editing or looking at them and never "unlocked" them on the Windows side.

I don't think mp3tag has any way of "locking" a folder or file, or even a specific tag field, unless perhaps you have the file open in mp3tag and are actively saving to it. In fact, there has been some discussion on that forum about requesting a feature to do this, but at this time there is no way to do it.

[schmidj]

I'm still sorting it out, but the server I purchased a year ago never had SAMBA properly configured. My bad. I'm not sure that was/is the only issue, it will take a while for the correct permissions to propagate through the server before I can experiment more. It is likely that mp3tag had nothing to do with it, but there is still a mystery why some files behaved "correctly", others didn't and some were visible to explorer but not TuneFusion. However I realize that explorer is running through my login while TuneFusion I believe is running as a service, which probably affects how it reacts to the permissions.

[schmidj]

I do wish Illustrate would develop a version of TuneFusion which would run as an app on my QNAP NAS. I wouldn't have to leave my editing PC running to allow it to run. But, given the issues with QNAP and Access, I can understand why Illustrate hasn't gone in that direction. An alternative would to have a version to run on a dedicated Pi computer or similar and talk via Ethernet/Wifi to the QNAP to sync directories.

[schmidj]

So here is the latest on my battle with TuneFusion (which generally has behaved well in the past, except for the direct syncing with my Android phone, for which I have a work-around. (more on that later in another post)

I found that my now over a year old NAS server had an issue with SAMBA (the app that allows Linux files to work with Windows and visa-versa) security settings never having been properly configured. I corrected that (which needed doing to properly secure the files), but that didn't solve the issue. (At least)One folder (album) of tracks refused to sync,it was like TuneFusion never saw it. It was the actual audio files (mp3's) since if I moved a file from another folder into the folder that had the "invisible" files, and moved one of the "invisible" files to another folder. the file from the other folder now synced (as the only file in the output in the folder with the files that wouldn't sync and the non-syncable file moved to another folder still didn't sync. Clearing the TuneFusion database didn't help. No matter what I tried, even changing the fiename and some of the tags in the "invisible" files (in windows explorer), nada...

Finally, I set up a new sync that included the "invisible" files and a portion of the 130,000 other files, a different new directory on the same destination drive, otherwise identical settings. Surprise (or maybe not), all the files synchronized, including the "invisible" in the original sync ones. So something is corrupt in the original sync, something that clearing the database or anything else I tried didn't fix. I've now set up the new sync to sync all 130,000 files. Tomorrow about this time, when it is finished, I'll know for sure the results. Then I'll retest the original issue of changed tags not being synced.

John

[schmidj]

OK, the latest results:

I created a new sync, as I said in the last post. Identical to the old one except the destination was a new directory on the same drive as the old one. It ran for almost 24 hours, completed successfully. 130,537 files synced. Note, I didn't reinstall TuneFusion, just created a new sync, added to the same install.

Then ran the previous sync again, 126,523 files synced. (somehow over 4000 files missed) but it says completed successfully. Note that before running this sync, I had clicked on the clear the database option. A week or so ago I had run it with the resync everything option. But somehow, it never cleared everything and kept missing over 4000 files...

On the new sync, after it completed, I tested changing tags with mp3tag, which does change the datestamp on the files with the config box unticked, and they did update correctly when resynced. Also tried changing tags with the dBpa right click editor. It also updates the file datestamps, (I don't see any option to not change them but there might be a DSP option to not change them.) And again, the tag info was properly updated when I ran the sync again.

So, when you don't have an apparently corrupted sync, it does update tags correctly. But what bothers me is that it was "off the rails" in a significant manner and yet reported that it completed successfully but wasn't syncing some 4000 files, repeatedly.

I'm going to see if I have (or can easily get) software to compare the two directories, to see what was left out. I know one batch of files, but that only accounts for a little over 100 of the 4000 files.

John