Synology DiskStation

• Synology Website: www.synology.com
• Current Firmware for DS-106j: DSM 2.1-0839; Build Date: 2009/03/25

• Activate iTunes Service
• Login to the DiskStation using telnet or ssh
• Remove music folder:

  rm /volume1/music

• Symlink the folder to your favorite location:

  ln -s /volume1/public/my_music /volume1/music

• Re-run the indexer to manually update the index:

  synoindex -A /volume1/music

  Make sure not to put a slash (/) at the end of the path! synoindex -A /folder is not the same as synoindex -A /folder/. Read below for more information on synoindex.

The meta information of media files (music, photos, videos etc.) is kept in a database that is updated automatically by synoindexd. The database is PostgreSQL and can be found at /volume1/@database. The indexing daemon can be manipulated from the command line by synoindex.

To access the database use the following command:

DiskStation> /usr/syno/pgsql/bin/psql mediaserver admin
Welcome to psql 8.2.5, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
       \h for help with SQL commands
       \? for help with psql commands
       \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
       \q to quit

mediaserver=#

To list all tables type

mediaserver=# \dt
         List of relations
 Schema |   Name    | Type  | Owner 
--------+-----------+-------+-------
 public | directory | table | admin
 public | music     | table | admin
 public | photo     | table | admin
 public | playlist  | table | admin
 public | video     | table | admin
(5 rows)

To show the contents of the music table type

select * from music;

To quit type

\q

Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Synology Inc. All rights reserved.

usage: 
    Add:    synoindex -a filename
    Delete: synoindex -d filename
    Add folder:    synoindex -A folder
    Delete folder: synoindex -D folder
    Rename/move file/folder:    synoindex -N newfullpath oldfullpath
    Update Photo Images:        synoindex -U photo
    Get from DB:         synoindex -g filename -t [video|music|photo|playlist]

Additionally there is another undocumented option -R:

synoindex -R [video|music|photo|playlist|all]

It seems to re-index the given table but I am not sure what it does exactly. If you removed or renamed a folder from the console and want to fix the index the -R option doesn't help you. In that case you have to delete the old folder using -D and then add the new folder using -A.

synoindex -D /volume1/music

Whenever you rename or move files manually using the console the database still contains information to these files which is no longer valid. This is especially annoying when you rename files or folders and then run synoindex -A /your_folder to update the database. The information for the renamed files will then be added a second time to the database. In iTunes the files will show up twice but only one link (the new one) will still work.

Unfortunately synoindex -R does not remove entries for files from the database that do no longer exist. The only way to fix this is to use synoindex -D on the old folder and then re-index using synoindex -A.

The following script queries all files from the music database and verifies if the file still physically exists. If not a message is printed to STDOUT. If started with -f the script also removes these files from the index database.

Usage: ./remove_orphans.sh [-f]

#!/bin/sh
# Usage: ./remove_orphans.sh [-f]
 
[ "$1" = "-f" ] && REMOVE=1
 
IFS='
'
for db in music video photo; do
    for testfile in `/usr/syno/pgsql/bin/psql mediaserver admin -tA -c "select path from $db;"`; do
        if [ ! -f "$testfile" ]; then
            echo "MISSING: $testfile"
            [ -n "$REMOVE" ] && synoindex -d "$testfile"
        fi
    done
done