I know many of us are using YAMJ to display all our movies/tv shows. However, is there a "best" way to do it to avoid spin-ups? Currently everytime I run YAMJ (even if there is no new data to be added), every drive in my system spins up. My jukebox folder is only on Disk1, but it seems it needs to spin up all 21 of my drives to read the other files even if they haven't changed. Browsing to these folders also will spin up that drive that movie is on. I run YAMJ 2-3x a day, and this just seems terrible on my drives. My server uses 190W with all drives spun up, so disabling spindown just isnt a option.

 

I currently use cache dirs with this on startup:

/boot/cache_dirs -w -e "Other Files"

 

My directory setup (Movies and TV Shows is the share):

Movies and TV Shows/Movies/The Dark Knight (2008)/The Dark Knight (2008).iso

Movies and TV Shows/Movies/The Dark Knight (2008)/The Dark Knight (2008).jpg

Movies and TV Shows/Movies/The Dark Knight (2008)/The Dark Knight (2008).fanart.jpg

Movies and TV Shows/Movies/The Dark Knight (2008)/The Dark Knight (2008).nfo

Movies and TV Shows/TV Shows/Breaking Bad/Breaking Bad.iso

Movies and TV Shows/TV Shows/Breaking Bad/Set_Breaking Bad_1.jpg

Movies and TV Shows/TV Shows/Breaking Bad/Set_Breaking Bad_1.fanart.jpg

Movies and TV Shows/TV Shows/Breaking Bad/Set_Breaking Bad_1.nfo

Movies and TV Shows/Jukebox/~16,000 files

 

Anyone find any solution? It's <2GB of pictures and info, you'd think you could just install 8GB of ram and have it stay in the memory.. but I know it's not that simple.

Check your spin-up group setting and group assignments. It should be off or each drive have a unique group assigned.

 

Anyone find any solution? It's <2GB of pictures and info, you'd think you could just install 8GB of ram and have it stay in the memory.. but I know it's not that simple.

The problem is, cache_dirs only does listings of directories, it does not cache the contents of the files in them.  therefore, as soon as you have played more than 8GB of movies, any prior data from the .jpg and .nfo files in the disk buffer cache have become the least recently used, and those disk buffer blocks reused for playing your movie.

 

Your media player is apparently then looking for the .jpg and .nfo file when browsing for new media.  It is then reading them from the disk as they are no longer in the buffer cache.

 

The solution is to only ever watch short movies.  That way, the .jpg and .nfo files can stay in the disk buffer cache. 

I use YAMJ & cache_dirs with only 2G memory. There is 1.5G of files in my jukebox folder. Only the parity disk and the disk with the jukebox folder and index.htm file spin up if no new files added (just verified).

 

It's been almost 2 years since I set up my YAMJ, so I needed to rethink this.

 

1) As I stated in my previous post check spin up groups. My spin up groups always get messed up everything I add a controller card. Either turn it off or ensure that each disk has a unique spin up group assigned to it.

 

2) Make sure your jukebox folder and index.htm file are on one disk.

 

3) Last, which I think is your problem, make sure the following line is in your moviejukebox.properties file

 

mjb.recheck.XML=false

 

The default is true. Rechecking causes all the nfo and movie files to be re-scrubbed. This is what causes the drives to spin up. The down side to not recheck is information you are viewing will be stale, and only as current as when you first added the file. This OK with me since I use EMM to populate my nfos and I want the information to be static the way I want it and not have YAMJ update it to be like it thinks it should be.

I use YAMJ & cache_dirs with only 2G memory. There is 1.5G of files in my jukebox folder. Only the parity disk and the disk with the jukebox folder and index.htm file spin up if no new files added (just verified).

 

It's been almost 2 years since I set up my YAMJ, so I needed to rethink this.

 

1) As I stated in my previous post check spin up groups. My spin up groups always get messed up everything I add a controller card. Either turn it off or ensure that each disk has a unique spin up group assigned to it.

 

2) Make sure your jukebox folder and index.htm file are on one disk.

 

3) Last, which I think is your problem, make sure the following line is in your moviejukebox.properties file

 

mjb.recheck.XML=false

 

The default is true. Rechecking causes all the nfo and movie files to be re-scrubbed. This is what causes the drives to spin up. The down side to not recheck is information you are viewing will be stale, and only as current as when you first added the file. This OK with me since I use EMM to populate my nfos and I want the information to be static the way I want it and not have YAMJ update it to be like it thinks it should be.

 

Sorry for late reply. I've had spin up groups disabled for awhile, it's default on 5.0. I'll try disabling recheck.XML, as I also have local art for everything.

 

Anyone find any solution? It's <2GB of pictures and info, you'd think you could just install 8GB of ram and have it stay in the memory.. but I know it's not that simple.

The problem is, cache_dirs only does listings of directories, it does not cache the contents of the files in them.   therefore, as soon as you have played more than 8GB of movies, any prior data from the .jpg and .nfo files in the disk buffer cache have become the least recently used, and those disk buffer blocks reused for playing your movie.

 

Your media player is apparently then looking for the .jpg and .nfo file when browsing for new media.  It is then reading them from the disk as they are no longer in the buffer cache.

 

The solution is to only ever watch short movies.   That way, the .jpg and .nfo files can stay in the disk buffer cache.  

 

So if i'm hearing you right, 8GB of ram would be pointless? I was considering upgrading from 4GB since unraid + addons are using about 125MB and cache directories is using 3.7GB or so for caching. I use full BD isos, so my movies are ~26GB average.