Improvements for large music-base owners

Volumio Development Suggest a feature
#1

When you are a paying user of Volumio, you might expect some support and/or responses to posts. But hey, my keyboard is very patient. So here we go:

  1. Make Volumio boot from USB on Raspberry Pi devices. (the bootcode.bin option could be something you can look into!)
  2. If there is a large stack of music, and the user uses NFS, why don’t you store the Database on that NFS? First of all, this will be there, still after a crash of the Volumio Pi, and it saves users like me, a lot of time to “re-scan” the files and re-fill the database. (Which takes about 6 hours for MY music archive!)
  3. Make an option where you can actually choose where you want to store your configs? NFS/USB/Whatever. This way, you make re-installations a lot more easy.

Why these suggestions? Now, everytime I add new songs to my stash of music, and do a rescan, that ends up in a full re-install of the Volumio SD card, and start with a full scan of my stash. If I don’t do it this way, I end up with a frozen, unwilling to restart Volumio system.

For your info: Above happens on:

  • Pi Zero W
  • Pi 3B+
  • Pi 4 4GB

So, this is not an issue with the hardware. This is truly a design issue.
Please fix this?

2 Likes
#2

You are not paying to use Volumio, it is free to use. I am sorry that your questions were not answered on the forums; please remember that this is a Community effort to make Volumio a better experience for the Community.

This is a niche request, and you offer no reasons to make it so. Whilst it is possible in Raspbian, it is not clear to me what advantages it would offer that make the development time worth while.

Most people don’t use NFS. As to saving a copy of the database to a remote location, that sounds like a good idea, probably best achieved via a plugin.

There is a ‘backup’ plugin available currently, see Volumio Plugins Collection. This does not include music database, but probably could be extended to do so.

#3

Thank you for your reply.

To clear stuff up: I will give you some answers to your questions.

  1. The reason for having to boot from USB, are a couple:
  • Faster booting (Obvious)
  • Faster reading of the configurations and databases at startup. (Takes my system about 15 minutes to fully boot up and have the web-pages available)
  • Possibility to use “swap” because an USB attached SSD will not wear out as fast from that. (Obvious when you have large sets of music, like me).
  • Not needing NFS/SMB, because then people like me, can store music on the Volumio system. (Yep, 1 TB of FLAC does not fit on a SD card, right?)
  • I might not be the only one who likes this option.

  1. NFS, ok, that also includes SMB. So, Network-attached storage. Yes, great idea.

  2. If you can choose where the configuration is stored, you can actually use “faster” storage than the SD card, which will speed up booting. (and/or adding music to your stash). I consider the database with info used by Volumio part of the “configuration”.

So, I hope that this clears stuff up?

#4

Have you investigated why “Takes my system about 15 minutes to fully boot up and have the web-pages available”? What is Volumio doing during this time period? Is it actually a boot issue?

#5

Is there are reason you are doing a rescan instead of an update? A rescan will reindex your entire library. An update will just add the new tracks.

You can use a USB drive for this.

#6

Yes, I did investigate that long bootup time. And it is mainly caused by reading the databases.

#7

I do the rescan, because, during an update, nothing happens. (Not even after 24 hours). Therefore I am forced to do a rescan. Of about 300.000+ tracks. (Yes, all legal. And yes, including an extensive set of 78 rpm records)

And why should I have to use both SD and USB? Why not just simply one device, that can be put in to RAID1 mode, for example? (Fantec X-series with SSD drives).

But I guess that that is way to sophisticated, and exotic for most users, right?

#8

I also use NAS/Synology as my music storage … and have multiple Volumio so having the DB on the remote storage could be used by all Volumio instances (yes, I know then you need DB record locking or locking on updates)

1 Like
#9

Hello guys, I also use multiple instances of Volumio in my house and I have all music files stored on my Synology NAS.

It would be a great feature to have the database located on the NAS or to another LAN location so all the Volumio instances will be able to share it.

In the past I did it with Kodi and a mysql db and it works great!

2 Likes
#10

Because that’s not what you asked for. You wanted a way to not use NFS/SMB because 1TB of data does not fit on an SD card.

I’m not familiar with Fantec NAS systems. Can it run Docker? I believe there have been some unofficial ports of Volumio to docker containers which may get you some of the functionality you are looking for.

#11

Will not this be solved on the PI4 when they make a usb option on the eeprom as that would do away with the bootcode.bin? :thinking: :man_shrugging:

That would be a great time saver. I too have a large music collection (220,000+ tracks) on many terrabytes and sometimes it just gets stuck requiring a reboot after 3days of trying which looses ALL the work it has done on the database. (Maybe being able to stop an update/rescan before rebooting would be handy?) (I use a Seagate Personal Cloud with 5usb hard drives daisy chained to it)

Thanks for all your hard work guys. :wink: :+1:

1 Like
#12

The fantec raid box I referred to, is a hardware box, where you can put in 2 SSD drives, put that into:

  • RAID 0
  • RAID 1
  • JBOD
  • SINGLE DISKS

And your Pi, (or other device) will just recognize that as how you did set it up. It is not a NAS/SAN solution. It is an external housing for SSD’s. Just like ICY Box solutions. And there are others too. Specifically in RAID 1, they provide you with a running system, even when one of the 2 disks break down. If you need speed (or size) and you don’t mind the risk of losing setup/data, you put it into RAID 0.

So, my “complaint” falls into 2 separate issues:

  1. I want to run Volumio from an attached SSD, and not from unreliable SD cards
  2. I want to be able to store my configs and databases on NFS (which is connected to a RAID5 NAS)

In other words, I want more reliability and stability and flexibility.

Hope this clarifies for you?

#13

To answer your question: It’s impossible to find out, due to the fact that all 3 Pi systems I used, are so busy, that even logging on to the console, or ssh to the system isn’t working. Seen from the temperature increase (measured with a thermometer on the CPU) the CPU is very busy. I assume that it is doing something with the database with tracks, or something? So, I cannot answer your question.

Your earlier statement, that it’s free, is not fully true, because I bought myself a “virtuoso” subscription. Which implies that I paid for a product.

#14

I too have a rpi4, a synology ds115 nas and 120.000 tracks. I have tried several times to use this straight in the Volumio music library, with NFS and with SMB, but I’ve given up on it, Both Volumio and the Nas are almost unreachable when I try to use this; one time I kept the process running for 10 days but no success even when it marks the NAS as connected. I saw there was a lot of traffic between rpi and nas, a lot of small pachkets up and down. I guess there is a bug in it somehow. So now I use foobar on my pc to commect to the nas and stream the music to the Volumio rp1. Not what I expected when I bought this rpi4 with 4 GB memory but it works.

1 Like
#15

Yep @renebruns, you are not the only one with this issue. And ah… guess what? I’m already running on my 3rd SD card for this year… Why? Because you can’t run the software from USB SSD…

#16

I understand. Maybe try the same workaround: Foobar (with streaming plugin) on pc to stream to Volumio.

#17

Hi. Watching this with interest.

I am keen to utilize the Nanomesher Nanosound 1 case which has an M2.SSD extension add-on. I personally like the aesthetics, but unsure if the DAC is supported (new user, so just getting into the hardware options). In this day and age and given the RPi 4 boot options, it is disappointing that this is not seen as a worthwhile feature. The software appears to have ample investment into the functionality, audio quality and the look and feel, so I would love to compliment that with a case that I can show off, with SSD boot support built into the OS.

Whilst I appreciate it’s unsupported, Berrybooting Volumio is currently meeting my requirements for my RPi 3 B+ install with the pidesktop case and mSATA SSD.

Seems there is plenty of users that would benefit, and would tempt me to subscribe to give something back (unless I am missing finding a donate link)?

#18

@renebruns That is, by itself an idea. Only thing is, that I use home automation, to perform a lot of stuff, and Volumio has an integration to it. So, I can actually say stuff to my google, and play, forward, etc. the music I am listening to. If I wanted to just stream to an audio device, I could have used my Google Audio, and have less options to control. Luckily, my SD cards are still having warranty, so it doesn’t cost me a dime. Still annoying that every time it happens, I have to wait for hours, to re-read my entire collection, before I can listen to it again. But thank you anyways for your suggestion!

@snickwad, Don’t waste your money. People have been asking for that option for a long time now. (if you look at the community, you’ll find enough questions about it.). Honestly? I don’t mind spending €20 as donation, if that would help speeding up things. But that is the downside to semi-open-source software. They decide if it is going to be not implemented/maybe implemented/some day implemented/implemented when hell freezes over. Nothing wrong there. But don’t expect me, to buy, for example, an assembled audio thingy, that might face the same issues I have right now. (Volumio Primo €479, Volumio Primo HiFi €619).

I truly don’t mind spending money on something. But the moment that the version I am using right now, isn’t working as I expected, and I am facing a lot of issues with that, Don’t expect me then to trust the “full-blown-expensive” stuff to work properly and spend my money on that.