Serviio eating bandwidth on Synology NAS

Last week I received a notification that I was nearing my 1 TB data cap for the month. I knew I had downloaded some large files, and my kids had been streaming a lot of Disney Plus, so I didn't immediately think anything of it.

In an effort to not exceed the cap this month, I disabled my wifi, but I noticed my data usage was still increasing. I started monitoring which device(s) on my network were using bandwidth and I was able to narrow it down to my Synology NAS. I then logged into that box and stopped services one by one to identify which one was using data. As soon as I stopped Serviio, that stopped the data usage. I waited a few minutes to make sure I wasn't seeing any usage, then turned Serviio back on and it has been ok since then.

Is there any way to find out what Serviio was doing to use so much data? I was not actively streaming anything from my media server, so what could have been happening? I did remotely stream a video to my Android phone for my son about a week ago, but he only watched it for about an hour. That is the only situation I can think of where I would have expected any data usage from the Serviio service, but I don't know how it could have continued to use data after that. I am most interested in identifying what the issue was so I can prevent this from happening again in the future. Does anyone have any possible answers?

[freaknik]

I don't have the hardware or internet speed but I have a theory as follows:

Online source in played for an hour, player is turned off, nas keeps transcoding online source as if the person is still watching.

A detailed log would have clues I think. I have a speed cap at 15gb fml.

[atc98092]

It would have been nice to know if the data being used by the NAS was going in or out. I know Serviio will draw metadata from the Internet, but that shouldn't be anywhere near enough to be pushing your data cap (man I hate those). As freaknik mentioned, stopping a stream while a video is being transcoded does leave ffmpeg running, but I can't imagine how/where it's continuing to be streamed out if the Serviigo app stopped the stream. I can't imagine it being cached somewhere on the Internet.

It would have been nice to know if the data being used by the NAS was going in or out.

It actually looked like most of the data was coming in at a rate of about 2 Mbps, which doesn't make sense me. I wasn't streaming anything from an online source, so I really don't know what could have been coming in. I should note that I wasn't using the ServiiGo app, but the web interface on my phone. Maybe that was the problem? Unfortunately, I don't have detailed logs or even know how to access them on my NAS. Once I start fresh next month, I'll have to see if I can reproduce the behavior in any form.

[atc98092]

Thanks for that. I have no idea what might have been pulling data like that. Although 2 Mbps isn't much, it certainly would add up over a long period. Retrieving metadata generally only happens when a new file is added, and even if you added 6-7 files at once it shouldn't take hardly any time to grab the metadata, like a couple of minutes at most. Of course, a fresh Serviio installation would take some time to retrieve all metadata, depending on the number of files in your shared libraries.

[freaknik]

Idk isn't the metadata almost all text only I doubt that can add up enough to effect a cap that high even if it is running around the clock. As far as the caching, I thought if the online source is being transcoded the dupe file resides in the serviio temp folder in this case locally on the nas itself. Its a moot point since OP says he wasn't messing with online just a thought of mine.

Maybe update ffmpeg could that be a problem, something outdated that crashes it or has memory leak? Maybe back up ffmpeg and replace it with a new one (idk which binary is for nas) and replace with the latest.

[atc98092]

Metadata also retrieves the disc cover image, but yeah overall it's just not that much data. Yes, Serviio caches the transcoded file locally, but I was referring to something "out there" that might have also been caching. Perhaps the ISP, but I really have no idea.

[freaknik]

When I set the Metadata to local nfo files, I have the text nfo and the low res jpg poster images.

It's the same material more or less as online Metadata it came from same place pics are the same.

All nfo and jpg for entire library is under 100mb.

My money is still in some kind of memory leak in the nas from serviio, java or ffmpeg.

Hard to know without logs.

After several months without issue, this just happened to me again today. I got a notification from my ISP that I had used 75% of my monthly data cap. I immediately went to my router control panel and saw that my Synology NAS was constantly downloading between 1-2 Mbps. I logged into the NAS and restarted the Serviio service, which immediately stopped the data usage and it is sitting at 0.0 where it belongs. I still don't understand what it is that Serviio could be downloading at that rate. It looks like the activity just started today, but I haven't streamed anything from Serviio in weeks. Can anyone point me in the direction of how to get a detailed log on Synology?

[atc98092]

You'll notice that the forum software added a link to your detailed log question. It probably just did it to mine as well. Read that link on how to enable detailed logging. The problem might be that those logs get huge rather quickly, and if the problem doesn't occur for a while you might not capture anything useful. I have no idea where Serviio might be installed on your NAS, but in that location there will be a folder called log. If you want to let it run in debug mode for a while, you might export those logs (a new one is created every time it reaches 5 MB in size). Once you discover another occurrence, you can find the log file that covers that time period.

You'll notice that the forum software added a link to your detailed log question.

This is happening again where I am seeing my Synology consistently download about 1.3 Mbps. I was able to get to the log file on my NAS and I enabled detailed logging, but my wife is currently watching it so I'm not able to restart the server just yet.

Looking at the normal, non-detailed, logs... What I'm seeing is that MediaFileIndexer seems to be continuously updating the library. I included some of the rows below, but these are just a small snippet and it goes on and on. Is this unusual? I'm thinking it is constantly downloading from IMDB, but why would it be doing that?

2020-10-07 20:38:08,172 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Do the Wrong Thing' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 7/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S07E06.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:09,725 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Circle of Friends' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 1/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S01E07.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:11,567 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Everything Is Illumenated' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 5/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S05E06.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:13,548 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'A Little Reflection' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 8/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S08E06.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:15,206 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Helter Skelter' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 7/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S07E09.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:16,963 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'The Dark... Whatever' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 7/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S07E10.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:18,560 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Turning Biminese' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 3/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S03E05.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:20,385 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Do You See What I See?' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 7/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S07E11.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:22,421 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Surprise, Motherfucker!' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 7/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S07E12.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:24,061 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Easy As Pie' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 3/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S03E07.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:24,978 WARN [VideoMetadata] Invalid format for IMDB: 'tt11989890'. Ignoring it for file 'null'
2020-10-07 20:38:25,690 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet' (/volume2/Video/Movies/David Attenborough - A Life on Our Planet (2020).mkv) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:27,510 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Father Knows Best' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 1/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S01E09.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:29,218 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Nebraska' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 6/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S06E07.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:30,903 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 3/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S03E03.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:32,674 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Those Kinds of Things' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 6/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S06E01.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:34,342 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Argentina' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 7/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S07E08.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library
2020-10-07 20:38:36,124 INFO [MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'Morning Comes' (/volume2/Video/Dexter/Season 2/[TorrentCouch.com].Dexter.S02E08.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4) in Library

[atc98092]

Zip will need to answer about this, but I did take a look at my log and searched for "[MediaFileIndexer] Updated" This particular log file started on Aug 5, and there are 376 matches for that phrase since then. Most of mine seem to be either from issues getting the correct metadata from TheTVDB.com, or just when I have added a new title to my library and it's gathering the metadata. But in all cases mine appear to be when I've done something myself: added, deleted, or renamed a file. I don't see a list of just Updated like you show there.

What is interesting is that these are the latest files I have copied over to my NAS within the past few days, but I would only expect them to update metadata once. They seem to be getting stuck repeatedly refreshing metadata.

For example, I have 25 instances of this message over a 1 hour period:
[MediaFileIndexer] Updated 'David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet' (/volume2/Video/Movies/David Attenborough - A Life on Our Planet (2020).mkv) in Library