Emby Specialists for hire?


dcruff

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I did finally get my Emby/Unraid system up and running well.  But it took me several days to get it back up when it might have only taken an hour if I had the experience/understanding/ or help that I needed.

I know that everyone's situation is different, but mine is unique in simple ways.  I only use my Unraid server as an Emby Media Server.  I have disabled any use of my SSD cache for everything except 'appdata'.  I have my media backed up externally and have Emby scheduled to back up it's configuration daily to one of the array drives - maybe I should send that limited configuration data backed up to the FLASH boot drive (or another FLASH usb drive) instead.  I know that there are things that could be configured better, but it seems that having an experienced linux person actively helping would have brought me to where I am, and further, very much quicker.

Emby Server management is not for the faint of heart.

Unraid Server management is not for the faint of heart. 

I've done fairly well, but with far too many pitfalls.  I considered several times returning to a Windows server but now I'm glad that I didn't.  I love the benefits and performance of running my Emby server on Unraid, but I wish that I could do rudimentary tasks on it that were second-nature to me on Window (and DOS). 

Example, I still haven't been able to find a good way to back up my Unraid server to external USB drives - or to even access those external drives with routine file management (through a GUI or console commands) when directly connected to the Unraid Server.  I currently back up the media on the array manually over my LAN and do all of my administration through mapped drives on Windows.  It's not the most efficient, but it works.  

Some of these things that I mentioned don't need to be addressed quick/fast/today, but when my system is down because of a failure of an SSD cache drive, some experienced handholding would have been nice.  I was able to have Amazon get a replacement SSD to me the same day, and yet my system was down for a week while my learning curve was waiting on cryptic forum responses.

It's been frustrating and it seems that there are probably a lot of linux aficionados who might have been able to help but I have no effective way of accessing them.  It cost me a lot of down time and frustration that might have been avoided.
Maybe there is a professional support system that I'm just unaware of.

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12 minutes ago, dcruff said:

disabled any use of my SSD cache for everything except 'appdata'.

Your system share is also part of docker and should also be on cache.

 

15 minutes ago, dcruff said:

back up my Unraid server to external USB drives

Probably some dockers for that, you might look for Backup on the Apps page. I use an rsync-based script. Possibly a single rsync command is all that's needed. If you know about host paths for dockers you should already know the paths to user shares.

 

13 minutes ago, dcruff said:

access those external drives with routine file management

Unassigned Devices plugin plus Dynamix File Manager (Unraid 6.10+ required).

 

36 minutes ago, dcruff said:

when my system is down because of a failure of an SSD cache drive, some experienced handholding would have been nice.  I was able to have Amazon get a replacement SSD to me the same day, and yet my system was down for a week while my learning curve was waiting on cryptic forum responses.

I looked at your other thread about this, and you were receiving experienced handholding. If you needed more explanation you should have asked.

 

23 minutes ago, dcruff said:

It's been frustrating and it seems that there are probably a lot of linux aficionados who might have been able to help but I have no effective way of accessing them.

Looks like you abandoned the thread people were already helping you on (and where you had already received a lot of help) and started this one without even mentioning that other thread. Then you didn't respond to an offer of help on this thread.

 

25 minutes ago, dcruff said:

Maybe there is a professional support system that I'm just unaware of.

The free help available on this forum is the very best feature of Unraid. We are all just fellow Unraid users, helping each other for free. You might be able to negotiate paid support with Limetech, but their time probably isn't cheap, and usually unnecessary since so many are here to help for free.

 

I didn't jump in on your other thread since I don't use emby and was already active on many other threads. But I can help with dockers more generally, and often help people save their data.

 

Sometimes a little patience is required. This isn't our job, and we have other things to do and other people to help. If you feel your thread hasn't received any attention after a reasonable time, make a new post in it ("bump") so it will show up as unread near the top of the subforum.

 

And don't hesitate to ask more questions if you need more answers.

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1. Depending on which version of unraid your running you could use Dynamix File Manager. You need 6.10 installed to use it thou. 

2. Also you could use the user.scripts plugin and create a few scripts that will copy or move things for you at certain date/time

3. Make sure you install the Backup/Restore plugin. Its great for backing up and restoring  your SSD if it ever happens again. 

4. You could use the unassigned devices plugin to connect your USB drive and copy/move to it as well. 

 

There are a log of solutions depending on your needs. 

 

like @trurl was more or less said. I've followed threads with him helping people and he literally holds peoples hands telling them exactly what to type to the point of "are you kidding me", but he has the patience and wants to help. There are several people that do that here. . 

I don't have the patience myself or the skill set, but I have no problems throwing a few buzz words or suggestions to give people at least enough so they can travel the path and figure it out. 

 

Nobody here will leave you high and dry. We all want everybody to be successful. 

 

I personally couldn't help much because I use Plex and to this date have never tried Emby so I didn't focus much on this post because I would of even more lost than you. Lol

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embyserver-diagnostics-20220914-1505.zipThe frustrations come from sometimes waiting days for a response.  I have many family members who log into my server nightly and I wasn't able to get the server up as quickly as I wanted to.  The responses on these threads are helpful but often not timely.  I don't feel that anyone here owes me anything, which is why I was looking for someone who could give more immediate service for a fee.

Part of my problem was just basic understanding of how the cache drive was being used.  Once I gained a little more understanding, I chose not to try to recover any data on it and replaced the SSD with a new one.  Then, I realized that it didn't mount automatically - again, neophyte issues.  Once I mounted it, it became purely an Emby issue because Emby no longer saw it's configuration files and thought that it was a new install.  I quickly found the backup files on disk 2 of the array and was able to restore the most recent configuration files.

I thought that I was home-free and informed my users of such, but the Emby docker quickly utilized 100% of the processing resources.  Several more attempts were made at clearing the SSD (reformatting it) and then doing the restore again with similar results - Emby server locking up within an hour.
Final solution - partial restore of configuration (Media library locations and User account names- 24 listed users).  

Emby Server is now at 100% functionality with over 4500 films, almost 80 Series, hundreds of music CD's and much more.

 

I've looked for dockers in the past that would help with file management and backups and tried some out that are no longer updated.  They were inconsistent and locked up often.   I haven't looked at that for a while because I've settled into a routine of using the LAN and mapped drives from this Windows computer.  Maybe I should also look for some kind of a tutorial on scripting.  I know that there is a lot of power in scripting, but I'm not there yet.

Edited by dcruff
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https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Shares#Default_Shares

 

Your system and domains shares are on the array. If you aren't using VMs you might as well disable VM Manager and not worry about domains share.

 

Your appdata is all on cache so that is good.

 

Ideally, these shares would all be completely on fast pool such as cache, so docker/VM performance won't be impacted by slower array, and so array disks can spindown since these files are always open.

 

Nothing can move or delete open files, so you have to disable Docker and VM Manager to work with these shares. To get these moved to cache you have to set them to cache:prefer. You can set them to cache:only if you want after they are all on cache, but mover ignores cache:only shares.

 

I encourage you to install Dynamix File Manager plugin, so you can work with these and other files directly on the server. Then you won't need mover to move these for you.

 

Sounds like you are figuring things out. There is a bit of a learning curve to get the full potential out of Unraid, but learning how to do things is better than getting someone else to do them for you. Keep at it and don't hesitate to ask more questions.

 

Here is a link to a very old thread about the rsync script I use. Some of the discussion is based on old Unraid version and plugins from then, but the script still works and can be adapted. I use this to backup my most important files to NTFS formatted drives in an external enclosure and rotate several of these offsite. I also use the same script to backup the less important files to my backup Unraid server. There are other rsync scripts floating around on the forum as well, see the Unassigned Devices thread for example. The rsync command all by itself will do most of the work.

 

 

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