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arr-metadata-server

Keeping the media

Every picture and theme a work points at can be fetched once and kept, so the catalogue reads without its providers — and keeps reading when they are gone. Set AMS_MEDIA_STORAGE to filesystem (files under AMS_MEDIA_DIR, data/media by default) or s3 (a bucket, Amazon’s or anything that speaks S3 — Garage, MinIO, RustFS, Ceph — with AMS_S3_ENDPOINT, AMS_S3_REGION, AMS_S3_BUCKET, AMS_S3_ACCESS_KEY and AMS_S3_SECRET_KEY). Off by default: nothing is kept until it is asked for.

  • What is kept. The work’s posters, backdrops, banners and logos, its seasons’, its episodes’ stills, its cast’s photographs and a Fan-Kai’s theme music. Never a trailer or a video. The cast’s photographs and the themes are each a switch on Administration › Media, where the store’s figures, the failures and the tasks are.
  • When. As a work is stored — a refresh, a sync, an import — its media go in line, and a worker fetches them a few at a time; the work is served the moment its details are, and its pictures switch to the copies kept as they land. Store everything fetches what a catalogue held before the store was switched on. An address that fails is tried again a few hours later, five times; one that answers with something else is given up on at once. Both are listed on the page, to be tried again.
  • Where from. An address is whatever somebody who may edit put on a work, so none is fetched from this machine, from a cloud’s metadata service or from any other address only this server can reach — however it is written, and whatever it redirects to. A picture mirror on a private network is reached all the same; AMS_MEDIA_PRIVATE_NETWORKS=false keeps the store and the NFO export out of 10/8, 172.16/12, 192.168/16, 100.64/10 and IPv6’s unique-local fc00::/7 too (true by default).
  • How they are served. Every copy is addressed by the hash of its bytes under /media/, and served immutable — with a thumbnail beside each picture, so a page of cards weighs what it did. The rows keep the providers’ addresses: a work is rewritten as it is read, never as it is written, and asking for a copy to be forgotten puts the provider’s address back. Sonarr, Radarr and the NFO documents are given the copies’ addresses when AMS_PUBLIC_URL is set, and the providers’ when it is not, since only this server’s own pages can follow a path. A bucket’s media go through this server, or, with Sent to the bucket’s own address, a reader is redirected to a presigned address good for an hour.
  • By hand. From a work’s page, a picture or a theme can be uploaded — read for what it is, never for what it is called; SVG is refused, since a document that can carry a script must not be served from here — and a copy taken away. An upload’s file goes with it; a provider’s copy is fetched again at the next refresh.
  • The sweep. Daily, and on request: what no work points at any more — a work removed, a picture a provider dropped, an upload taken off — is forgotten and its file deleted, and a file no row names is removed once it has had its hour.
  • Moving the store. The rows say which copies exist, not where: pointed at another bucket or directory, they name files that are not there. Either copy the files across first, or Forget every copy on the Media page and store everything again. A database transfer carries the rows, not the files.

The providers’ terms still apply to what is kept: TMDB, TheTVDB and Fanart.tv each say what may be done with their pictures.

The switches of the Media page — store, how a bucket’s copies are served, the cast’s photographs, the themes — are settings: see Media in the settings reference.