Moving DVR Recordings gone wrong

[pdaphone]

I have Channels running on a Mac Mini with 3 external USB drives. I intend to move the recordings to a shared folder on a new Synology NAS. I followed the instructions here -

Move Recordings

The result in settings is what I would expect:
/Volumes/ChannelsDVR/DVR
/Volumes/External3/DVR
/Volumes/External2/DVR
/Volumes/External/1/DVR

But, it is not working. The Library and Guide seem to be fine, but if I try to watch a show through the web UI, I get "The media could not be loaded either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported". Live TV fails as well. On an Apple TV, trying to watch something recorded I get a /Channels/DVR is not found.

It also is in downloading guide now for a long time.

How do I get this sorted out?

[maddox]

Please submit diagnostics from your Channels DVR Server.

[pdaphone]

I submitted diagnostics after restarting the Mac. It now seems like its healed itself after the reboot so not sure what was going on there. Maybe the diagnostics will show what was going on before that it seemed to be hosed up. I didn't change anything after the reboot.

One other question is how do I assure that the mounted share on the Mac comes back after a reboot? When I rebooted I had to reconnect to the NAS and log back in.

[maddox]

Yes, macOS is an absolutely terrible steward of mounted shares.

You can mount a share on login via System Settings at General > Login Items. Just drag the share into the top list. These instructions are for the latest macOS, Ventura.

As for keeping the share mounted all the time, maybe the community can help. But I know macOS can easily just drop mounted shares. This is one reason I don't personally like macOS for a server use case anymore.

[racameron]

@pdaphone

One other question is how do I assure that the mounted share on the Mac comes back after a reboot?

You could always try creating a system-level Launch script to mount the drive, and then ensure that the script runs at startup.

To mount from the command line/script, try something like:

mount -t smbfs //user:pass@host/share /Volumes/share

(Just make sure that /Volumes/share is an existing empty directory.)

Edit: Don't forget to disable creation of the AppleDouble files (.DS_Store/._*) on your network shares:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool TRUE

And if you want to do the same for USB drives, try:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteUSBStores -bool TRUE

[tmm1]

AutoMounter

[pdaphone]

Thanks, this is helpful.

My Mac Mini is Late 2012 running Mojave, and the drag and drop into Login Items worked fine. I'm still amazed at how long these Macs run!

I'll try the other scripts or the AutoMounter app if this isn't consistently doing the trick.

[eric]

I would suggest using AutoMounter. I've been using it for a few months and it works great. The issue with the Login Items is that eventually you'll have a network blip that will cause the drive to get unmounted and it won't remount again until you reboot.

AutoMounter will notice these things and fix it automatically for you.

[pdaphone]

Buying it now. Overnight the share disconnected for no apparent reason and several things I had going on with Channels and photo migration all quit.

[pdaphone]

Just bought it. Overnight the share disconnected for no apparent reason and several things I had going on with Channels and photo migration all quit. Installed AutoMounter and rebooted a couple of times and seems to work OK. I assume you don't have to do anything more with its configuration to make it reconnect if something knocks it off.

[eric]

That's correct. When I was setting up my DVR I tested it out by disconnecting the network cable for a few minutes to cause a network problem, see it disconnect, plugged it back in, and saw it reconnect again.

I believe I also tried unmounting it in the Finder and seeing that it came back immediately.