[Topic renamed slightly to help other people with the main NAS-refresh issue find the thread. --Leo]
Annoying and frustrating - I have a music library on a NAS. Perhaps I enabled something accidentally but Directory Opus insist on displaying the following columns and constantly refreshing just these columns every couple seconds:
Attr
Artist
Album
Year
Track
Duration
Because the constant refresh is distracting I right-click on any column header / More / and in the Columns tab I remove all these columns. I even click the Save button at the top "For this folder and all sub folders."
I click OK and go about my business. No sooner than after navigating for example to My Documents and back to my music library the whole refresh thing starts again and all the columns I removed are back.
Thinking this may be caused by something on the NAS or this specific computer I fire up a laptop also connected to the network and Opus is doing the same thing. Ok I drilled it down to either Opus or the NAS. So then I fire up the native Windows Explorer and I see the columns Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size. I add Artist and Album - the columns populate okay without refreshing, ever. I remove the columns, close Explorer, get something to eat, come back and the columns are still gone. Good!
Now that I know it is not my network or a specific computer, how do I get Opus to either remember I do not want to see these columns or ideally, stop refreshing just those columns every second?
Read the entire Folder FAQ and even applied all the changes just to see what effect each had - the refreshing problem persists. A minor plus I was able to permanently remove some of the offensive columns but the ones I would like to keep visible; Artist, Album and Year, are still refreshing every second.
If Opus keeps re-calculating the values in those columns it must be because the NAS is reporting that the files have changed.
Is something actually modifying the files? It's quite strange if not (although some NAS have been known to behave in strange ways).
You could try the notify_debug and shellchange_debug steps in this FAQ if you want to see if the NAS is constantly reporting file changes. (The FAQ is about changes not being received when they should; seems like you're seeing the opposite problem, but the debugging steps are the same.)
You could also try turning off the Detect external file changes on network drives setting mentioned in the same FAQ, in case it helps or reveals anything.
I turned off the Detect external file changes on network drives and quickly re-enabled it - I need it for the other folders that do not exhibit this behavior. Again, I cannot blame it on the NAS since Window's default explorer does not 'poll' the NAS for these same columns.
A couple facts:
This behavior started with the last Opus update - the 'file changes on network drives' feature has always been enabled in past versions
The NAS is the same unit we have been using for 3 years
The NAS has an "Application Server" called Multimedia Station which has never been enabled; if enabled this feature will rescan any media libraries automatically
Just throwing these out there to drill down what is at fault.
Please try the debug steps I mentioned. They will tell us if the OS is telling Opus the files keep changing. If it is then we can try to work out why and otherwise we can try to think why else this might be happening.
Have you installed any video codecs or software which might include them recently?
When you say it is polling and re-calculating the columns, what do you mean exactly? If the files are not changing then the columns should always calculate the same values, so you would not see anything changing. Do you mean the columsn are being populated (i.e. empty to start with and then slowly filled in), rather than re-calculated?
Have you tried going back to the Opus version that used to work to confirm that it still works? It could be a coincidence, but if it isn't then it narrows down the things that we need to investigate. If you don't have the version let me know which one it was and I will get the installer for you.
confirm the same prob with mp3 files on my NAS (qnap439).
As soon as the first column with an ID3-Tag is included, e.g. ‘Artist’, dopus begins to refresh pemantly without stopping. Here are some screen shots to demonstrate this strange behavior:
Turning off the option to detect changes on network drives helps, but BTW it’s very slow:
Please try the debug steps I mentioned. They will tell us if the OS is telling Opus the files keep changing. If it is then we can try to work out why and otherwise we can try to think why else this might be happening.
DebugView protocols permanently changes, like:
[4656] dopus: Change 3 to Z:\ST\Stevie Wonder\1980 - Hotter Than July\Stevie Wonder - 1980 - Hotter than july - 01 - Did I hear you say you love me.mp3
The 'Accessed' column has no effect, as mentioned above, if the first column with an ID3-Tag ist invoked, the change orgy starts
That's normal since (modern versions of) Windows/NTFS no longer update the accessed timestamp (by default), as it caused performance issues for very little benefit.
[quote="frose"]DebugView protocols permanently changes, like:
[4656] dopus: Change 3 to Z:\ST\Stevie Wonder\1980 - Hotter Than July\Stevie Wonder - 1980 - Hotter than july - 01 - Did I hear you say you love me.mp3
The 'Accessed' column has no effect, as mentioned above, if the first column with an ID3-Tag ist invoked, the change orgy starts[/quote]
Those two things combined make it look like your NAS is reporting that the files change when Opus simply opens them to read their tags. A read-only operation should not result in a change event so something is going wrong there.
That seems like a bug in the NAS to me, unless something actually is modifying the files in reaction to Opus opening them.
If you are familiar with Process Monitor, you could use that to confirm that Opus (and anything else on your system) is not actually modifying the files. (Opus definitely shouldn't be, and doesn't for me.)
(I guess it could also be a bug in an anti-virus scanner or similar, since they can interfere with filesystem activity. Might be worth temporarily disabling any real-time virus scanner to confirm it has no effect, but my bet is that there is a bug in the NAS rather than anything else.)
Yes, since Vista the default Value for 'NtfsDisableLastAccesUpdate' is 0!
But only the last access date/time changed NOT the modified date/time!?
No, I don't think so. The only thing is, that the drives of the NAS are not mounted with the 'noatime' attribute, so each access lead to a change of the timestamp!
BTW, the Windows Explorer shows the same behaviour, so it's a configuration issue of the NAS and not an issue of dopus
Of course, the endless loop of dopus is only suboptimal, but the option 'Detect external file changes on network drives' does the job
[quote]If you are familiar with Process Monitor, you could use that to confirm that Opus (and anything else on your system) is not actually modifying the files. (Opus definitely shouldn't be, and doesn't for me.)
(I guess it could also be a bug in an anti-virus scanner or similar, since they can interfere with filesystem activity. Might be worth temporarily disabling any real-time virus scanner to confirm it has no effect, but my bet is that there is a bug in the NAS rather than anything else.)[/quote]
No other process is involved, same behaviour if anti-virus is deactivated!
Yesterday upgraded to the actual version!
Conclusion: I have to clarify, if it is possible to mount the drives of the NAS with the 'noatime' attribute
But only the last access date/time changed NOT the modified date/time!?[/quote]
That makes the file-change events the NAS is generating seem almost certainly bogus. The files do not appear to be being modified, yet the NAS keeps saying they have changed (which causes Opus to re-read their tags).
QNAP have a support forum, might be worth asking for advice on there. If what looks to be happening really is then it seems like something that would affect other scenarios, not just Opus.
